THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


GIFT  OF 

Franklin  P.  Nutting 


HEROES,  HERO  WORSHIP 


AND 


THE  HEROIC   IN   HISTORY. 


By  THOMAS  CARLYLE. 


NEW  YORK: 
A.  L.  BUKT.  PUBLISHER. 


co> 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  I. 

PAGE. 
THE   HERO   AS   DIVINITY.     Odin — Paganism — Scandinavian 

Mythology 1 

LECTURE  II. 
THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.    Mahomet— Islam 49 

LECTURE  III. 
THE  HERO  AS  POET.     Dante — Shakespeare 92 

LECTURE  IV. 

THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.     Luther— Reformation— Knox— Puri- 
tanism       136 

LECTURE  V. 

THE   HERO   AS   MAN   OF   LETTERS.     Johnson,    Rousseau, 

Burns 182 

LECTURE  VI. 

THE  HERO  AS  KING.    Cromwell,  Napoleon— Modern  Revo- 
lutionism   231 

SUMMARY  AND  INDEX 289,  299 


962 


HEROES,  HERO-WORSHIP, 


AND 


THE  HEROIC  IN  HISTORY. 


LECTUEE   L* 

THE   HERO  AS   DIVINITY — ODIN — PAGANISM — SCANDINAVIAN 
MYTHOLOGY. 

WE  HAVE  undertaken  to  discourse  here  for  a  little  on 
great  men,  their  manner  of  appearance  in  our  world's 
business,  how  they  have  shaped  themselves  in  the 
world's  history,  what  ideas  men  formed  of  them,  what 
work  they  did;  on  heroes,  namely,  and  on  their 
reception  and  performance ;  what  I  call  hero-worship 
and  the  heroic  in  human  affairs.  Too  evidently  this 
is  a  large  topic;  deserving  quite  other  treatment  then 
we  can  expect  to  give  it  at  present.  A  large  topic ; 
indeed,  an  illimitable  one ;  wide  as  universal  history 
itself.  For,  as  I  take  it,  universal  history,  the  history 
of  what  man  has  accomplished  in  this  world,  is  at  bot- 
tom the  history  of  the  great  men  who  have  worked 
here.  They  are  the  leaders  of  men,  these  great  ones ; 
the  modelers,  patterns,  and  in  a  wide  sense  creators, 
of  whatsoever  the  general  mass  of  men  contrived  to 
do  or  to  attain  ;  all  things  that  we  see  standing 
accomplished  in  the  world  are  properly  the  outer 

'Delivered  Tuesday,  May  5,  1940. 


2  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

material  result,  the  practical  realization  and  embodi- 
ment of  thoughts  that  dwelt  in  the  great  men 
sent  into  the  world :  the  soul  of  the  whole  world's 
history,  it  may  justly  be  considered,  were  the  history 
of  these.  Too  clearly  it  is  a  topic  we  shall  do  no 
justice  to  in  this  place  ! 

One  comfort  is,  that  great  men  taken  up  in  any  way, 
are  profitable  company.  We  cannot  look,  however 
imperfectly,  upon  a  great  man  without  gaining  some- 
thing by  him.  He  is  the  living  light-fountain,  which 
it  is  good  and  pleasant  to  be  near.  The  light  which 
enlightens,  which  has  enlightened  the  darkness  of  the 
world;  and  this  not  as  a  kindled  lamp  only,  but  rather 
as  a  natural  luminary  shining  by  the  gift  of  Heaven  ; 
a  flowing  light-fountain,  as  I  say,  of  native  original 
insight,  of  manhood  and  heroic  nobleness— in  whose 
radiance  all  souls  feel  that  it  is  well  with  them.  On 
any  terms  whatsoever,  you  will  not  grudge  to  wander 
in  such  neighborhood  for  a  while.  These  six  classes 
of  heroes,  chosen  out  of  widely -distant  countries  and 
epochs,  and  in  mere  external  figure  differing  altogether, 
ought,  if  we  look  faithfully  at  them,  to  illustrate 
-several  things  for  us.  Could  we  see  them  well,  we  should 
/  get  some  glimpses  into  the  very  marrow  of  the  world's 
V  history.  How  happy,  could  I  but  in  any  measure,  in  such 
times  as  these,  make  manifest  to  you  the  meanings  of 
heroism  ;  the  divine  relation  (for  I  may  well  call  it  such) 
which  in  all  times  unites  a  great  man  to  other  men  ;  and 
thus,  as  it  were,  not  exhaust  my  subject,  but  so  much  as 
break  ground  on  it !  At  all  events  I  must  make  the 
attempt. 

It  is  well  said,  in  every  sense,  that  a  man's  religion 
is  the  chief  fact  with  regard  to  him.    A  man's,  or  a 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  3 

nation  of  men's.  By  religion  I  do  not  mean  the  church- 
creed  which  he  professes,  the  articles  of  faith  which 
he  will  sign,  and,  in  words  or  otherwise,  assert ;  not  this 
wholly,  in  many  cases  not  this  at  all.  We  see  men  of 
all  kinds  of  professed  creeds  attain  to  almost  all  degrees 
of  worth  or  worthlessness  under  each  or  any  of  them. 
This  is  not  what  I  call  religion,  this  profession  and  as- 
sertion ;  which  is  often  only  a  profession  and  assertion 
from  the  outworks  of  the  man,  from  the  mere  argument- 
ative region  of  him,  if  even  so  deep  as  that.  But  the 
thing  a  man  does  practically  believe  (and  this  is  often 
enought  without  asserting  it  even  to  himself,  much  less 
to  others ) ;  the  thing  a  man  does  practically  lay  to  heart 
and  know  for  certain,  concerning  his  vital  relations  to 
this  mysterious  universe,  and  his  duty  and  destiny 
there,  that  is  in  all  cases  the  primary  thing  for  him,  and 
creatively  determines  all  the  rest.  That  is  his  religion  ; 
or,  it  may  be,  his  mere  skepticism  and  no-religion:  the 
manner  it  is  in  which  he  feels  himself  to  be  spiritually 
related  to  the  unseen  world  or  no-world ;  and  I  say, 
if  you  tell  me  what  that  is,  you  tell  me  to  a  very  great 
extent  what  the  man  is,  what  the  kind  of  things  he  will 
do.  Of  a  man  or  of  a  nation  we  inquire,  therefore,  first 
of  all.  What  religion  they  had  ?  Was  it  Heathenism- 
plurality  of  gods,  mere  sensuous  representation  of  this 
mystery  of  life,  and  for  chief  recognised  element 
therein  physical  force  ?  Was  it  Christianism ;  faith  in  an 
invisible,  not  as  real  only,  but  as  the  only  reality;  time, 
through  every  meanest  moment  of  it,  resting  on  eternity ; 
pagan  empire  of  force  displaced  by  a  nobler  supremacy 
that  of  holiness?  Was  it  skepticism,  uncertainty  and 
inquiry  whether  there  was  an  unseen  world,  and 
mystery  of  life  except  a  mad  one — doubt  as  to  all 
this,  or  unbelief  and  flat  denial  ?  Answering  of  this 


4  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

question  is  giving  us  the  soul  of  the  history  of  the  man  or 
nation.  The  thoughts  they  had  were  the  parents  of 
the  actions  they  did ;  their  feelings  were  parents  of  their 
thoughts :  it  was  the  unseen  and  spiritual  in  them  that 
determined  the  outward  and  actual ;  their  religion,  as 
I  say,  was  the  great  fact  about  them.  In  these  dis- 
courses limited  as  we  are,  it  will  be  good  to  direct  our 
survey  chiefly  to  that  religious  phasis  of  the  matter. 
That  once  known  well,  all  is  known.  We  have  chosen  as 
the  first  hero  in  our  series,  Odin  the  central  figure  of 
Scandinavian  paganism;  an  emblem  to  us  of  a  most 
extensive  province  of  things.  Let  us  look  for  a  little 
at  the  hero  as  divinity,  the  oldest  primary  form  of 
heroism. 

Surely  it  seems  a  very  strange  looking  thing  this 
paganism  ;  almost  inconceivable  to  us  in  these  days. 
A  bewildering,  inextricable  jungle  of  delusions,  con- 
fusions, falsehoods  and  absurdities,  covering  the  whole 
field  of  life !  A  thing  that  fills  us  with  astonishment, 
almost,  if  it  were  possible,  with  incredulity — for  truly 
it  is  not  easy  to  understand  that  sane  men  could  ever 
calmly,  with  their  eyes  open,  believe  and  live  by 
such  a  set.  of  doctrines.  That  men  should  have  wor- 
shiped their  poor  fellow-man  as  a  god,  and  not  him 
only,  but  stocks  and  stones,  and  all  manner  of  animate 
and  inanimate  objects ;  and  fashioned  for  themselves 
such  a  distracted  chaos  of  hallucinations  by  way  of 
theory  of  the  universe :  all  this  looks  like  an  incred- 
ible fable.  Nevertheless  it  is  a  clear  fact  that  they 
did  it.  Such  hideous  inextricable  jungle  of  miswor- 
ships,  misbeliefs,  men,  made  as  we  are,  did  actually  hold 
by,  and  live  at  home  in.  This  is  strange.  Yes,  we 
may  pause  in  sorrow  and  silence  over  the  depths  of 
darkness  that  are  in  man ;  if  we  rejoice  in  the  heights 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  5 

of  purer  vision  he  has  attained  to.     Such  things  were 
and  are  in  man  ;  in  all  men ;  in  us  too. 

Some  speculators  have  a  short  way  of  accounting 
for  the  pagan  religion  :  mere  quackery,  priestcraft  and 
dupery,  say  they  ;  no  sane  man  ever  did  believe  it — 
merely  contrived  to  persuade  other  men,  not  worthy  of 
the  name  of  sane,  to  believe  it !  It  will  be  often  our 
duty  to  protest  against  this  sort  of  hypothesis  about 
men's  doings  and  history ;  and  I  here,  on  the  very 
threshold,  protest  against  it  in  reference  to  paganism, 
and  to  all  other  isms  by  which  man  has  ever  for  a  length 
of  time  striven  to  walk  in  this  world.  They  have  all  had 
a  truth  in  them,  or  men  would  not  have  taken  them  up. 
Quackery  and  dupery  do  abound ;  in  religions,  above 
all  in  the  more  advanced  decaying  stages  of  religions, 
they  have  fearfully  abounded  :  but  quackery  was 
never  the  originating  influence  in  such  things ;  it 
was  not  the  health  and  life  of  such  things,  but  their 
disease,  their  sure  precursor  of  their  being  about  to  die ! 
Let  us  never  forget  this.  It  seems  to  me  a  most 
mournful  hypothesis,  that  of  quackery  giving  birth  to 
any  faith  even  in  savage  men.  Quackery  gives  birth 
to  nothing  ;  gives  death  to  all  things.  We  shall  not 
see  into  the  true  heart  of  anything,  if  we  look  merely 
at  the  quackeries  of  it ;  if  we  do  not  reject  the  quack- 
eries altogether  ;  as  mere  diseases,  corruptions,  with 
which  our  and  all  men's  sole  duty  is  to  have  done 
with  them,  to  sweep  them  out  of  our  thoughts  as  out 
of  our  practice.  Man  e very  vy here  is  the  born  enemy 
of  lies.  I  find  grand  lamaism  itself  to  have  a  kind  of 
truth  in  it.  Bead  the  candid,  clear-sighted,  rather 
skeptical  Mr.Turner's  "Account  of  his  Embassy  "  to  that 
country  and  see.  They  have  their  belief,  these  poor 
Thibet  people^  that  Providence  sends  down  always  an 


6  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

incarnation  of  Himself  into  every  generation.  At 
bottom  some  belief  in  a  kind  of  pope !  At  bottom 
still  better,  belief  that  there  is  a  greatest  man ;  that  he 
is  discoverable  ;  that,  once  discovered,  we  ought  to 
treat  him  with  an  obedience  which  knows  no  bounds. 
This  is  the  truth  of  grand  lamaism  ;  the  "  discover- 
ability "  is  the  only  error  here.  The  Thibet  priests 
have  methods  of  their  own  of  discovering  what  man 
is  greatest,  fit  to  be  supreme  over  them.  Bad  meth- 
ods :  but  they  are  so  much  worse  than  our  methods 
— of  understanding  him  to  be  always  the  eldest-born 
of  a  certain  genealogy?  Alas,  it  is  a  difficult  thing  to 
find  good  methods  for !  We  shall  begin  to  have  a 
chance  of  understanding  paganism,  when  we  first  ad- 
mit that  to  its  followers  it  was,  at  one  time,  earnestly 
true.  Let  us  consider  it  very  certain  that  men  did  be- 
lieve in  paganism ;  men  with  open  eyes,  sound  senses, 
men  made  altogether  like  ourselves  ;  that  we,  had  we 
been  there,  should  have  believed  in  it.  Ask  now, 
What  paganism  could  have  been  ? 

Another  theory,  somewhat  more  respectable,  attrib- 
utes such  things  to  allegory.  It  was  a  play  of  poetic 
minds,  say  these  theorists  ;  a  shado\ving-forth,  in  alle- 
gorical fable, -in  personification  and  visual  form,  of 
what  such  poetic  minds,  had  known  and  felt  of  this 
universe.  Which  agrees,  add  they,  with  a  primary 
law  of  human  nature,  still  everywhere  observably 
at  work,  though  in  less  important  things.  That 
what  a  man  feel  intensely,  he  struggles  to  speak- 
out  of  him,  to  see  represented  before  him  in  visual 
shape,  and  as  if  with  a  kind  of  life  and  historical 
reality  in  it.  Now  doubtless  there  is  such  a  law, 
and  it  is  one  of  the  deepest  in  human  nature  ;  neither 
need  we  doubt  that  it  did  operate  fundamentally  in 


TEE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  7 

this  business.  The  hypothesis  which  ascribes  pagan- 
ism wholly  or  mostly  to  this  agency,  I  call  a  little  more 
respectable  ;  but  I  cannot  yet  call  it  the  true  hypothesis. 
Think,  would  we  believe,  and  take  with  us  as  our  life- 
guidance,  an  allegory,  a  poetic  sport  ?  Not  sport  but 
earnest  is  what  we  should  require.  It  is  a  most  earn- 
est thing  to  be  alive  in  this  world  ;  to  die  is  not  sport 
for  a  man.  Man's  life  never  was  a  sport  to  him ;  it 
was  a  stern  reality,  altogether  a  serious  matter  to  be 
alive! 

I  find  therefore,  that  though  these  allegory  theorists 
are  on  the  way  toward  truth  in  this  matter,  they  have 
not  reached  it  either.  Pagan  religion  is  indeed  an 
allegory,  a  symbol  of  what  men  felt  and  knew  about 
the  universe  ;  and  all  religions  are  symbols  of  that, 
altering  always  as  that  alters :  but  it  seems  to  me  a 
radical  perversion  and  even  mversion,  of  the  business, 
to  put  that  forward  as  the  origin  and  moving  cause, 
when  it  was  rather  the  result  and  termination.  To  get 
beautiful  allegories,  a  perfect  poetic  symbol,  was  not 
the  want  of  men  ;  but  to  know  what  they  were  to 
believe  about  this  universe,  what  course  they  were  to 
steer  in  it ;  what,  in  this  mysterious  life  of  theirs,  they 
had  to  hope  and  to  fear,  to  do  and  to  forbear  doing.  The 
"  Pilgrim's  Progress  "  is  an  allegory  and  a  beautiful,  just 
and  serious  one  :  but  consider  whether  Bunyan's  alle- 
gory could  hwQ  preceded  the  faith  it  symbolizes  !  The 
faith  had  to  be  already  there,  standing  believed  by 
everybody — of  which  the  allegory  could  then  become 
a  shadow  ;  and,  with  all  its  seriousness,  we  may  say  a 
sportful  shadow,  a  mere  play  of  the  fancy,  in  compar- 
ison with  that  awful  fact  and  scientific  certainty  which 
it  poetically  strives  to  emblem.  The  allegory  is  the 
product  of  the  certainty,  not  the  producer  of  it ;  not  in 


8  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

Bunyan's  nor  in  any  other  case.  For  paganism,  there- 
fore, we  have  still  to  inquire,  whence  came  that  scien- 
tific certainty,  the  parent  of  such  a  bewildered  heap  of 
allegories,  errors  and  confusions  ?  How  was  it,  what 
was  it  ? 

Surely  it  were  a  foolish  attempt  to  pretend  "  ex- 
plaining," in  this  place,  or  in  any  place,  such  a  phenom- 
enon as  that  far-distant  distracted  cloudy  imbroglio  of 
paganism— -more  like  a  cloud  field  than  a  distant  con- 
tinent of  firm  land  and  facts  !  It  is  no  longer  a  reality  ? 
yet  it  was  one.  We  ought  to  understand  that  this 
seeming  cioudfield  was  once  a  reality  ;  that  not  poetic 
allegory,  least  of  all  that  dupery  and  deception  was 
the  origin  of  it.  Men,  I  say,  never  did  believe  idle 
songs,  never  risked  their  soul's  life  on  allegories  :  men 
in  all  times,  especially  in  early  earnest  times,  have  had 
an  instinct  for  detecting  quacks,  for  destesting  quacks. 
Let  us  try  if,  leaving  out  both  the  quack  theory  and 
the  allegory  one  and  listening  with  affectionate  at- 
tention to  that  far-off  confused  rumor  of  the  pagan 
ages,  we  cannot  ascertain  so  much  as  this  at  least : 
that  there  was  a  kind  of  fact  at  the  heart  of  them  ; 
that  they  too  were  not  mendacious  and  distracted,  but 
in  their  own  poor  way  true  and  sane  ! 

You  remember  that  fancy  of  Plato's,  of  a  man  who 
had  grown  to  maturity  in  some  dark  distance  and  was 
brought  on  a  sudden  into  the  upper  air  to  see  the  sun 
rise.  What  would  his  wonder  be,  his  rapt  astonish- 
ment at  the  sight  we  daily  witness  with  indifference ! 
With  the  free  open  sense  of  a  child,  yet  with  the  ripe 
faculty  of  a  man,  his  whole  heart  would  be  kindled  by 
that  sight,  he  would  discern  it  well  to  be  godlike,  his 
soul  would  fall  down  in  worship  before  it.  Now,  just 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  Q 

such  a  childlike  greatness  was  in  the  primitive  nations. 
The  first  pagan  thinker  among  rude  men,  the  first 
man  that  began  to  think,  was  precisely  this  child-man 
of  Plato's.  Simple,  open  as  a  child,  yet  with  the  depth 
and  strength  of  a  man.  Nature  had  as  yet  no  name  to 
him;  he  had  not  yet  united  under  a  name  the  infinite 
variety  of  sights,  sounds,  shapes  and  motions,  which 
we  now  collectively  name  universe,  nature,  or  the 
like — and  so  with  a  name  dismiss  it  from  us.  To  the 
wild  deep-hearted  man  all  was  yet  new,  not  veiled 
under  names  or  formulas ;  it  stood  naked,  flashing-in 
on  him  there,  beautiful,  awful,  unspeakable.  Nature 
was  to  this  man,  what  to  the  thinker  and  prophet  it 
forever  is,  jprefcrnatoral.  This  green  flowery  rock- 
built  earth,  the  trees,  the  mountains,  rivers,  many- 
sounding  seas ;  that  great  deep  sea  of  azure  that  swims 
overhead;  the  winds  sweeping  through  it ;  the  black 
cloud  fashioning  itself  together,  now  pouring  out  fire, 
now  hail  and  rain  ;  what  is  it  ?  Ay,  what  ?  At  bottom 
we  do  not  yet  know ;  we  can  never  know  at  all.  It  is 
not  by  our  superior  insight  that  we  escape  the  difficulty ; 
it  is  by  our  superior  levity,  our  inattention,  our  want 
of  insight.  It  is  by  not  thinking  that  we  cease  to 
wonder  at  it.  Hardened  round  us,  encasing  wholly 
every  notion  we  form,  is  a  wrappage  of  traditions, 
hearsays,  mere  words.  We  call  that  fire  of  the  black 
thunder-cloud  "  electricity,"  and  lecture  learnedly  about 
it  and  grind  the  like  of  it  out  of  glass  and  silk :  but 
what  is  it?  What  made  it?  Whence  comes  it?  Whither 
goes  it  ?  Science  has  done  much  for  us  ;  but  it  is  a  poor 
science  that  would  hide  from  us  the  great  deep  sacred 
infinitude  of  nescience,  whither  we  can  never  penetrate, 
on  which  all  science  swims  as  a  mere  superficial  filip 
This  world,  after  all  our  science  and  sciences,  is  still  ;i 


1 0  LECTURES  ON 

miracle  ;  wonderful,  inscrutable,  magical  and  more,  to 
whosoever  will  think  of  it. 

That  great  mystery  of  time,  were  there  no  other ; 
the  illimitable,  silent,  never-resting  thing  called  time, 
rolling,  rushing  on,  swift,  silent,  like  an  all-embracing 
ocean-tide,  on  which  we  and  all  the  universe  swim  like 
exhalations,  like  apparitions  which  are  and  then  are 
not :  this  is  forever  very  literally  a  miracle ;  a  thing 
to  strike  us  dumb — for  we  have  no  word  to  speak 
about  it.  This  universe,  ah  me — what  could  the  wild 
man  know  of  it ;  what  can  we  yet  know  2  That  it  is  a 
force  and  thousandfold  complexity  of  forces  ;  a  force 
which  is  not  we.  That  is  all ;  it  is  not  we,  it  is  alto- 
gether  different  from  us.  Force,  force,  everywhere 
force ;  we  ourselves  a  mysterious  force  in  the  center 
of  that.  "  There  is  not  a  leaf  rotting  on  the  highway 
but  has  force  in  it :  how  else  could  it  rot  ? "  Nay 
surely,  to  the  atheistic  thinker,  if  such  a  one  were 
possible,  it  must  be  a  miracle  too,  this  hugh  illimitable 
whirlwind  of  force,  which  envelopes  us  here ;  never- 
resting  whirlwind,  high  as  immensity,  old  as  eternity. 
"What  is  it  ?  God's  creation,  the  religious  people  answer  ; 
it  is  the  Almighty  God's !  Atheistic  science  babbles 
poorly  of  it,  with  scientific  nomenclatures,  experiments 
and  what  not,  as  if  it  were  a  poor  dead  thing,  to  be 
bottled  up  in  Leyden  jars  and  sold  over  counters  :  but 
the  natural  sense  of  man,  in  all  times,  if  he  will  hon- 
estly apply  his  sense,  proclaims  to  be  a  living  thing — 
ah,  an  unspeakable,  godlike  thing ;  toward  which  the 
best  attitude  for  us,  after  never  so  much  science,  is 
awe,  devout  prostration  and  humility  of  soul ;  worship 
if  not  in  words,  then  in  silence. 

But  now  I  remark  further :  What  in  such  a  time  as 
ours  it  requires  a  prophet  or  poet  to  teach  us,  namely, 


THE  HEHO  AS  DIVINITY.  H 

the  stripping-off  of  those  poor  undevout  wrappages, 
nomenclatures  and  scientific  hearsays — this,  the  ancient 
earnest  soul,  as  yet  unencumbered  with  these  things, 
did  for  itself.  The  world,  which  is  now  divine  only 
to  the  gifted  was  then  divine  to  whosoever  would  turn 
his  eye  upon  it.  He  stood  bare  before  it  face  to  face. 
"  All  was  godlike  or  god : "  Jean  Paul  still  finds 
it  so ;  the  giant  Jean  Paul,  who  has  power  to  escape 
out  of  hearsays ;  but  there  then  were  no  hearsays. 
Canopus  shining-down  over  the  desert,  with  its  blue 
diamond  brightness  (that  wild  blue  spirit-like  bright- 
ness, far  brighter  than  we  ever  witness  here),  would 
pierce  into  the  heart  of  the.  wild  Ishmaelitish  man, 
whom  it  was  guiding  through  the  solitary  waste  there. 
To  his  wild  heart,  with  all  feelings  in  it,  with  no  speech 
for  any  feeling,  it  might  seem  a  little  eye,  that  Canopus, 
glancing-out  on  him  from  the  great  deep  eternity ;  re- 
vealing the  inner  splendor  to  him.  Cannot  we  under- 
stand how  these  men  worshiped  Canopus ;  became  what 
we  call  Sabeans,  worshiping  the  stars  ?  Such  is  to  me 
the  secret  of  all  forms  of  paganism.  Worship  is  tran- 
scendent wonder ;  wonder  for  which  there  is  now  no 
limit  or  measure ;  that  is  worship.  To  these  primeval 
men,  all  things  and  everything  they  saw  exist  beside 
them  were  an  emblem  of  the  godlike,  of  some  god. 

And  look  what  perennial  fiber  of  truth  was  in  that. 
To  us  also,  through  every  star,  through  every  blade 
of  grass,  is  not  a  god  made  visible,  if  we  will  open  our 
minds  and  eyes  ?  We  do  not  worship  in  that  way  now : 
but  is  it  not  reckoned  still  a  merit,  proof  of  what  we  call 
a"  poetic  nature, "  that  we  recognize  how  every  object 
has  a  divine  beauty  in  it ;  how  every  object  still  verily 
is  "  a  window  though  which  we  may  look  into  infinitude 
itself? "  He  that  can  discern  the  loveliness  of  things,  we 


12  LECTVttES  ON  HEROES. 

call  him  poet,  painter,  man  of  genius,  gifted,  lovable. 
These  poor  Sabeans  did  even  what  he  does — in  their 
own  fashion.  That  they  did  it,  in  what  fashion  soever, 
was  a  merit :  better  than  what  the  entirely  stupid  man 
did,  what  the  horse  and  camel  did — namely,  nothing  ! 

But  now  if  all  things  whatsoever  that  we  look  upon 
are  emblems  to  us  of  the  highest  god,  I  add  that  more 
so  than  any  of  them  is  man  such  an  emblem.  You  have 
heard  of  St.  Chrysostom's  celebrated  saying  in  refer- 
ence to  the  shekinah,  or  ark  of  testimony,  visible 
revelation  of  God,  among  the  Hebrews:  "The  true 
shekinah  is  man !  "  Yes,  it  is  even  :  so  this  is  no  vain 
phrase ;  it  is  veritably  so.  The  essence  of  our  being,  the 
mystery  in  us  that  calls  itself  "  I " — ah,  what  words 
have  we  for  such  things  ? — is  a  breath  of  heaven  ;  the 
highest  being  reveals  himself  in  man.  This  body,  these 
faculties,  this  life  of  ours,  is  it  not  all  as  a  vesture  for 
that  unnamed  ?  "  There  is  but  one  temple  in  the 
universe,"  says  the  devout  Novalis,  "and  that  is  the 
body  of  man.  Nothing  is  holier  than  that  high  form. 
Bending  before  men  is  a  reverence  done  to  this  revela- 
tion in  the  flesh.  We  touch  heaven  when  we  lay  our 
hand  on  a  human  body ! "  This  sounds  much  like  a  mere 
flourish  of  rhetoric ;  but  it  is  not  so.  If  well  meditated, 
it  will  turn  out  to  be  a  scientific  fact ;  the  expression, 
in  such  words  as  can  be  had,  of  the  actual  truth  of  the 
thing.  We  are  the  miracle  of  miracles — the  great 
inscrutable  mystery  of  God.  "We  cannot  understand  it, 
we  know  not  how  to  speak  of  it ;  but  we  may  feel  and 
know,  if  we  like,  that  it  is  verily  so. 

"Well;  these  truths  were  once  more  readily  felt  than 
now.  The  young  generations  of  the  world,  who  had 
in  them  the  freshness  of  young  children,  and  yet  the 
depth  of  earnest  men,  who  did  not  think  that  they  had 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  13 

finished-off  all  things  in  heaven  and  earth  by  merely 
giving  them  scientific  names,  but  had  to  gaze  direct  at 
them  there,  with  awe  and  wonder :  they  felt  better 
what  of  divinity  is  in  man  and  nature — they,  without 
being  mad,  could  worship  nature  and  man  more  than 
anything  else  in  nature.  Worship,  that  is,  as  I  said 
above,  admire  without  limit :  this,  in  the  full  use  of 
their  faculties,  with  all  sincerity  of  heart,  they  could 
do.  I  consider  hero-worship  to  be  the  grand  modifying 
element  in  that  ancient  system  of  thought.  What  I 
called  the  perplexed  jungle  of  paganism  sprang,  we 
may  say,  out  of  many  roots  :  every  admiration,  adora- 
tion of  a  star  or  natural  object,  was  a  root  or  fiber  of 
a  root ;  but  hero-worship  is  the  deepest  root  of  all;  the 
tap-root,  from  which  in  a  great  degree  all  the  rest  were 
nourished  and  grown. 

And  now  if  worship  even  of  a  star  had  some  meaning 
in  it,  how  much  more  might  that  of  a  hero !  Worship 
of  a  hero  is  transcendent  admiration  of  a  great  man. 
I  say  great  men  are  still  admirable ;  I  say  there  is,  at 
bottom,  nothing  else  admirable!  No  nobler  feeling 
than  this  of  admiration  for  one  higher  than  himself 
dwells  in  the  breast  of  man.  It  is  to  this  hour,  and  at 
all  hours,  the  vivifying  influence  in  man's  life.  Eelig- 
ion  I  find  stand  upon  it ;  not  paganism  only,  but  far 
higher  and  truer  religions — all  religion  hitherto  known. 
Hero-worship,  heartfelt  prostrate  admiration,  submis- 
sion, burning,  boundless,  for  a  noblest  godlike  vform  of^ 
man— is  not  that  the  germ  of  Christianity  itself  ?  The 
greatest  of  all  heroes  is  one — whom  we  do  not  name 
here  !  Let  sacred  silence  meditate  that  sacred  matter; 
you  will  find  it  the-  ultimate  perfection  of  a  principle 
extant  throughout  man's  whole  history  on  earth. 

Or  coming  into  lower,  less  imspeakable  provinces,  is 


14  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

not  all  loyalty  akin  to  religious  faith  also  ?  Faith  is 
loyalty  to  some  inspired  teacher,  some  spiritual  hero. 
And  what  therefore  is  loyalty  proper,  the  life-breath 
of  all  society,  but  an  effluence  of  hero-worship,  sub- 
missive admiration  for  the  truly  great  ?  Society  is 
founded  on  hero-worship.  All  dignities  of  rank,  on 
which  human  association  rests,  are  what  we  might  call 
a  Heroarchy  (government  of  heroes),  or  a  hierarchy, 
for  it  is  "  sacred  "  enough  withal !  The  duke  means 
dux,  leader  ;  king  is  kon-ning,  kan-ning,  man  that 
knows  or  cans.  Society  everywhere  is  some  represen- 
tation, not  msupportably  inaccurate,  of  a  graduated 
worship  of  heroes — reverence  and  obedience  done  to 
men  really  great  and  wise.  Not  msupportably  inac- 
curate, I  say !  They  are  all  as  bank-notes,  these  social 
dignitaries,  all  representing  gold — and  several  of  them, 
alas,  always  we*  forged  notes.  We  can  do  with  some 
forged  false  notes ;  with  a  good  many  even  ;  but  not 
with  all,  or  the  most  of  them  forged  !  No  :  there  have 
to  come  revolutions  then  ;  cries  of  democracy,  liberty 
and  equality  and  I  know  not  what — the  notes  being  all 
false  and  no  gold  to  be  had  for  them,  people  take  to 
crying  in  their  despair  that  there  is  no  gold,  that  there 
never  was  any  !  "  Gold,"  hero-worship,  is  nevertheless, 
as  it  was  always  and  everywhere  and  cannot  cease  till 
man  himself  ceases. 

I  am  well  aware  that  in  these  days  hero-worship, 
the  thing  I  call  hero-worship,  professes  to  have  gone 
out  and  finally  ceased.  This,  for  reasons  which  it  will 
be  worth  while  some  time  to  inquire  into,  is  an  age 
that  as  it  were  denies  the  existence  of  great  men  ; 
denies  the  desirableness  of  great  men.  Show  our 
critics  a  great  man,  a  Luther  for  example,  they  begin 
to  what  they  call  "account"  for  him ;  not  to  worship 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  15 

him,  but  'take  the  dimensions  of  him — and  bring  him 
out  to  be  a  little  kind  of  man !  He  was  the  "  creature 
of  the  time,"  they  say  ;  the  time  called  him  forth,  the 
time  did  everything,  he  nothing — but  what  we  the 
little  critic  could  have  done  too !  This  seems  to  me 
but  melancholy  work.  The  time  call  forth?  Alas,  we 
have  known  times  call  loudly  enough  for  their  great 
man  ;  but  not  find  him  when  they  called  !  He  was  not 
there  ;  providence  had  not  sent  him  ;  the  time,  calling 
its  loudest,  had  to  go  down  to  confusion  and  wreck 
because  he  would  not  come  when  called. 

For  if  we  will  think  of  it,  no  time  need  have  gone 
to  ruin,  could  it  have  found  a  man  great  enough,  a 
man  wise  and  good  enough  :  wisdom  to  discern  truly 
what  the  time  wanted,  valor  to  lead  it  on  the  right 
road  thither  ;  these  are  the  salvation  of  any  time.  But 
I  liken  common  languid  times,  with  their  unbelief, 
distress,  perplexity,  with  their  languid  doubting  char- 
acters and  embarrassed  circumstances,  impotently 
crumbling-down  into  ever  worse  distress  toward  final 
ruin — all  this  I  like^l  to  dry  dead  fuel,  waiting  for  the 
lightning  out  of  heaven  that  shall  kindle  it.  The 
great  man,  with  his  free  force  direct  out  of  God's  own 
hand,  is  the  lightning.  His  word  is  the  wise  healing 
word  which  all  can  believe  in.  All  blazes  round  him 
now,  when  he  has  once  struck  on  it,  into  fire  like  his 
own.  The  dry  mold er ing  sticks  are  thought  to  have 
called  him  forth.  They  did  want  him  greatly;  but  as 

to  call  him  forth Those  are  critics  of  small  vision,  I 

think,  who  cry  :  "  See,  is  it  not  the  sticks  that  made 
the  fire  ? "  No  sadder  proof  can  be  given  by  a  man  of 
his  own  littleness  than  disbelief  in  great  men.  There 
is  no  sadder  symptom  of  a  generation  than  such  general 
blindness  to  the  spiritual  lightning,  with  faith  only  in 


1G  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

the  heap  of  barren  dead  fuel.  It  is  the  last  consum- 
mation of  unbelief.  In  all  epochs  of  the  world's  history, 
we  shall  find  the  great  man  to  have  been  the  indispens- 
able savior  of  his  epoch — the  lightning,  without  which 
the  fuel  never  would  have  burned.  The  history  of 
the  world,  I  said  already,  was  the  biography  of  great 
men. 

Such  small  critics  do  what  they  can  to  promote  un- 
belief and  universal  spiritual  paralysis :  but  happily 
they  cannot  always  completely  succeed.  In  all  times 
it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  arise  great  enough  to  feel 
that  they  and  their  doctrines  are  chimeras  and  cobwebs. 
And  what  is  notable,  in  no  time  whatever  can  they 
entirely  eradicate  out  of  living  men's  hearts  a  certain 
altogether  peculiar  reverence  for  great  men;  genuine 
admiration,  loyalty,  adoration,  however  dim  and  per- 
verted it  may  be.  Hero-worship  endures  forever 
while  man  endures.  Boswell  venerates  his  Johnson, 
right  truly  even  in  the  eighteenth  century.  The  un- 
believing French  believe  in  their  Yoltaire  ;  and  burst 
out  round  him  into  very  curious  hero-worship,  in  that 
last  act  of  his  life  when  they  "  stifle  him  under  roses." 
It  has  always  seemed  to  me  extremely  curious  this  of 
Yoltaire.  Truly,  if  Christianity  be  the  highest  instance 
of  hero-worship,  then  we  may  find  here  in  Yoltaireism 
one  of  the  lowest !  He  whose  life  was  that  of  a  kind 
of  Antichrist,  does  again  on  this  side  exhibit  a  curious 
contrast.  No  people  ever  were  so  little  prone  to  ad- 
mire at  all  as  those  French  of  Yoltaire.  Persiflage  wras 
the  character  of  their  whole  mind  ;  adoration  had  no- 
where a  place  in  it.  You  see  !  The  old  man  of  Ferney 
comes  up  to  Paris;  an  old,  tottering,  infirm  man  84 
years  old.  They  feel  that  he  too  is  a  kind  of  hero ; 
that  he  has  spent  his  life  in  opposing  error  and  injus- 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  17 

tice,  delivering  Calases,  unmasking  hypocrites  in  high 
places — in  short  that  he  too,  though  in  a  strange  way, 
has  fought  like  a  valiant  man.  They  feel  withal  that, 
if  persiflage  be  the  great  thing,  there  never  was  such  a 
persifleur.  He  is  the  realized  ideal  of  every  one  of 
them ;  the  thing  they  are  all  wanting  to  be ;  of  all 
Frenchmen  the  most  French.  He  is  properly  their 
god — such  god  as  they  are  fit  for.  Accordingly  all 
persons,  from  the  Queen  Antoinette  to  the  Douanier  at 
the  Porte  St.  Denis,  do  they  not  worship  him  ?  People 
of  quality  disguise  themselves  as  tavern-waiters.  The 
Maitre  de  Poste,  with  a  broad  oath,  orders  his  postillion, 
"  Va  ~bon  train  ;  thou  art  driving  M.  de  Yoltaire."  At 
Paris  his  carriage  is  "  the  nucleus  of  a  comet,  whose 
train  fills  whole  streets/'  The  ladies  pluck  a  hair  or 
two  from  his  fur,  to  keep  it  as  a  sacred  relic.  There 
was  nothing  highest,  beautif ulest,  noblest  in  all  France, 
that  did  not  feel  this  man  to  be  higher,  beautifuler, 
nobler. 

Yes,  from  Norse  Odin  to  English  Samuel  Johnson, 
from  the  divine  founder  of  Christianity  to  the  withered 
pontiff  of  ency  eloped  ism,  in  all  times  and  places,  the 
hero  has  been  worshiped.  It  will  ever  be  so.  We  all 
love  great  men  ;  love,  venerate  and  bow  down  submis- 
sive  before  great  men :  nay,  can  we  honestly  bow  down 
to  anything  else  ?  Ah,  does  not  every  true  man  feel 
that  he  is  himself  made  higher  by  doing  reverence  to 
what  is  really  above  him  ?  No  nobler  or  more  blessed 
feeling  dwells  in  man's  heart.  And  to  me  it  is  very 
cheering  to  consider  that  no  skeptical  logic,  or  general 
triviality,  insincerity  and  aridity  of  any  time  and  its 
influences  can  destroy  this  noble  inborn  loyalty  and 
worship  that  is  in  man.  In  times  of  unbelief,  which 
£oon  have  to  become  times  of  revolution,  much  down- 


18  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

rushing,  sorrowful  decay  and  ruin  is  visible  to  every- 
body. For  nryself  in  these  days,  I  seem  to  see  in  this 
indestructibility  of  hero-worship  the  everlasting  ada- 
mant lower  than  which  the  confused  wreck  of  revolution- 
ary things  cannot  fall.  The  confused  wreck  of  things 
crumbling  and  even  crashing  and  tumbling  all  round 
us  in  these  revolutionary  ages,  will  get  down  so  far  ; 
no  farther.  It  is  an  eternal  corner-stone,  from  which, 
they  can  begin  to  build  themselves  up  again.  That 
man,  in  some  sense  or  other,  worships  heroes  ;  that  we 
all  of  us  reverence  and  must  ever  reverence  great  men  : 
this  is,  to  me,  the  living  rock  amid  all  rushings-down 
whatsoever — the  one  fixed  point  in  modern  revolution- 
ary history,  otherwise  as  if  bottomless  and  shoreless. 

So  much  of  truth,  only  under  an  ancient  obsolete 
vesture,  but  the  spirit  of  it  still  true,  do  I  find  in  the 
paganism  of  old  nations.  Nature  is  still  divine,  the 
revelation  of  the  workings  of  God ;  the  hero  is  still 
worshipable  :  this,  under  poor  cramped  incipient  forms, 
is  what  all  pagan  religions  have  struggled,  as  they 
could,  to  set  forth.  I  think  Scandinavian  paganism,  to 
us  here,  is  more  interesting  than  any  other.  It  is,  for 
one  thing,  the  latest;  it  continued  in  these  regions  of 
Europe  till  the  eleventh  century  :  eight  hundred  years 
ago  the  Norwegians  were  still  worshipers  of  Odin.  It 
is  interesting  also  as  the  creed  of  our  fathers ;  the  men 
whose  blood  still  runs  in  our  veins,  whom  doubtless  we 
still  resemble  in  so  many  ways  strange  :  they  did  be- 
lieve that,  while  we  believe  so  differently.  Let  us  look 
a  little  at  this  poor  Norse  creed,  for  many  reasons. 
We  have  tolerable  means  to  do  it ;  for  there  is  another 
point  of  interest  in  these  Scandinavian  mythologies  ; 
that  they  have  been  preserved  so  well, 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  19 

In  that  strange  island  Iceland— burst-up,  the  geolo- 
gists say,  by  fire  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea ;  a  wild 
land  of  barrenness  and  lava  ;  swallowed  many  months 
of  every  year  in  black  tempests,  yet  with  a  wild  gleam- 
ing beauty  in  summer-tirne ;  towering  up  there,  stern 
and  grim,  in  the  North  Ocean  ;  with  its  snow  jokuls, 
roaring  geysers,  sulphur-pools  and  horrid  volcanic 
chasms,  like  the  waste  chaotic  battle-field  of  frost  and 
fire — vvhere  of  all  places  we  least  looked  for  literature 
or  written  memorials,  the  record  of  these  things  was 
written  down.  On  the  seaboard  of  this  wild  land  is  a 
rim  of  grassy  country  where  cattle  can  subsist,  and  men 
by  means  of  them  and  of  what  the  sea  yields ;  and  it 
seems  they  were  poetic  men  these,  men  who  had  deep 
thoughts  in  them,  and  uttered  musically  their  thoughts. 
Much  would  be  lost,  had  Iceland  not  been  burst-up 
from  the  sea,  not  been  discovered  by  the  Northmen  ! 
The  old  Norse  poets  were  many  of  them  natives  of 
Iceland. 

Saemund,  one  of  the  early  Christian  priests  there,  who 
perhaps  had  a  lingering  fondness  for  paganism,  col- 
lected certain  of  their  old  pagan  songs,  just  about  be- 
coming obsolete  then — poems  or  chants  of  a  mythic, 
prophetic,  mostly  all  of  a  religious  character  :  that  is 
what  Norse  critics  call  the  Elder  or  poetic  Edda. 
Edda,  a  word  of  uncertain  etymology,  is  thought  to 
signify  Ancestress.  Snorro  Sturleson,  an  Iceland  gentle- 
man, an  extremely  notable  personage,  educated  by  this 
Saemund's  grandson,  took  in  hand  next,  near  a  century 
afterward,  to  put  together,  among  several  books  he 
wrote,  a  kind  of  prose  synopsis  of  the  whole  mythoU 
ogy  ;  elucidated  by  new  fragments  of  traditionary 
verse.  A  work  constructed  really  with  great  ingenuity, 
native  talent,  what  one  might  call  unconscious  art ; 


20  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

altogether  a  perspicuous  clear  work,  pleasant  reading 
still :  This  is  th  e  Younger  or  prose  Edda.  By  these 
and  the  numerous  other  Sagas,  mostty  Icelandic,  with 
the  commentaries,  Icelandic  or  not,  which  go  on  zeal- 
ously in  the  north  to  this  day,  it  is  possible  to  gain 
some  direct  insight  even  yet ;  and  see  that  old  Norse 
system  of  belief,  as  it  were,  face  to  face.  Let  us  forget 
that  it  is  erroneous  religion ;  let  us  look  at  it  as  old 
thought  and  try  if  we  cannot  sympathize  with  it 
somewhat. 

The  primary  characteristic  of  his  old  Northland 
mythology  I  find  to  be  impersonation  of  the  visible 
workings  of  nature.  Earnest  simple  recognition  of  the 
workings  of  physical  nature,  as  a  thing  wholly  miracu- 
lous, stupendous  and  divine.  What  we  now  lecture  of 
as  science,  they  wondered  at  and  fell  down  in  awe 
before,  as  religion.  The  dark  hostile  powers  of  nature 
they  figure  to  themselves  as  "  Jotuns"  giants,  hugh 
shaggy  beings  of  a  demonic  character.  Frost,  fire, 
sea-tempest;  these  are  Jotuns.  The  friendly  powers 
again,  as  summer  heat,  the  sun,  are  gods.  The  empire 
of  this  universe  is  divided  between  these  two;  they 
dwell  apart,  in  perennial  internecine  feud.  The  gods 
dwell  above  in  Asgard,  the  garden  of  the  Asen,  or 
divinities ;  Jotunheim,  a  distant  dark  chaotic  land,  is 
the  home  of  the  Jotuns. 

Curious  all  this ;  and  not  idle  or  inane,  if  we  will 
look  at  the  foundation  of  it !  The  power  of  fire,  or 
flame,  for  instance,  which  we  designate  by  some 
trivial  chemical  name,  thereby  hiding  from  ourselves 
the  essential  character  of  wonder  that  dwells  in  it  as 
in  all  things,  is  with  these  old  Northmen,  Loke,  a  most 
swift  subtle  demon,  of  the  brood  of  the  Jotuns.  The  sav- 
ages of  the  Ladrones  Islands  too  (say  some  Spanish  vov- 


THIS  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  21 

agers)  thought  fire,  which  they  never  had  seen  before, 
was  a  devil  or  god,  that  bit  you  sharply  when  you 
touched  it  and  that  lived  upon  dry  wood.  From  us 
too  no  chemistry,  if  it  had  not  stupidity  to  help  it, 
would  hide  that  flame  is  a  wonder.  What  is  flame  '{ 
Frost  the  old  Norse  seer  discerns  to  be  a  monstrous 
hoary  Jotun,  the  giant  Thrym,  Hrym  ;  or  Rime,  the 
old  word  now  nearly  obsolete  here,  but  still  used  in 
Scotland  to  signify  hoar  frost.  Rime  was  not  then  as 
now  a  dead  chemical  thing,  but  a  living  Jotun  or  devil ; 
the  monstrous  Jotun  Rime  drove  home  his  horses  at 
night,  sat  "  combing  their  manes  " — which  horses  were 
Hail-Clouds,  or  fleet  Frost -Winds.  His  cows — No, 
not  his,  but  a  kinsman's,  the  giant  Hymir's  cows  are 
Icebergs :  this  Hymir  "  looks  at  the  rocks "  with  his 
devil-eye  and  they  split  in  the  glance  of  it. 

Thunder  was  not  then  mere  electricity,  vitreous  or 
resinous ;  it  was  the  god  Donner  (thunder)  or  Thor ; 
god  also  of  beneficent  summer-heat.  The  thunder 
was  his  wrath ;  the  gathering  of  the  black  clouds  is  the 
drawing-down  of  Thor's  angry  brows;  the  fire-bolt 
bursting  out  of  heaven  is  the  all-rending  hammer  flung 
from  the  hand  of  Thor;  he  urges  his  loud  chariot  over 
the  mountain  tops — that  is  the  peal;  wrathful  he 
"  blows  in  his  red  beard  " — that  is  the  rustling  storm- 
blast  before  the  thunder  begin.  Balder  again  the 
white  god,  the  beautiful,  the  just  and  benignant 
(whom  the  early  Christian  missionaries  found  to  resem- 
ble Christ),  is  the  sun;  beautifulest  of  visible  things; 
wonderous  too,  and  divine  still,  after  all  our  astrono- 
mies and  almanacs  ?  But  perhaps  the  notablest  god 
we  hear  tell  of  is  one  of  whom  Grimm  the  German 
etymologist  finds  trace ;  the  god  Wunsch  or  Wish. 
The  god  Wish'  who  could  give  us.  all  that  we  wished / 


22  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

Is  not  this  the  sincerest  and  yet  rudest  voice  of  the 
spirit  of  man  ?  The  rudest  ideal  that  man  ever 
formed  ;  which  still  shows  itself  in  the  latest  forms  of 
our  spiritual  culture.  Higher  considerations  have  to 
teach  us  that  the  god  Wish  is  not  the  true  god. 

Of  the  other  gods  or  Jotuns  I  will  mention  only  for 
etymology's  sake,  that  sea-tempest  is  the  Jotun  Aegir, 
a  very  dangerous  Jotun ;  and  now  to  this  day,  on  our 
river  Trent,  as  I  learn  the  Nottingham  bargemen, 
when  the  river  is  in  a  certain  flooded  state  (a  kind  of 
backwater,  or  eddying  swirl  it  has,  very  dangerous  to 
them),  call  it  eager  ;  they  cry  out,  "have  a  care,  there 
is  the  eager  coming !"  Curious  ;  that  word  surviving 
like  the  peak  of  a  submerged  world  !  The  oldest  Not- 
tingham bargemen  had  believed  in  the  god  Aegir. 
Indeed  our  English  blood  too  in  a  good  part  is  Danish, 
Norse ;  or  rather,  at  bottom,  Danish  and  Norse  and 
Saxon  have  no  distinction,  except  a  superficial  one — as 
of  heathen  and  Christian,  or  the  like.  But  all  over  our 
island  we  are  mingled  largely  with  Danes  proper — from 
the  incessant  invasions  there  were :  and  this  of  course 
in  a  greater  proportion  along  the  east  coast;  the 
greatest  of  all,  as  I  find,  in  the  north  country.  From 
the  humbler  upward,  all  over  Scotland,  the  speech  of 
the  common  people  is  still  in  a  singular  degree  Icelan- 
dic ;  its  Germanism  has  still  a  peculiar  Norse  tinge. 
They  too  are  "  Norman,"  Northmen,  if  that  be  any 
great  beauty ! 

Of  the  chief  god,  Odin,  we  shall  speak  by  and  by. 
Mark  at  present  so  much ;  what  the  essence  of  Scandi- 
navian and  indeed  of  all  paganism  is :  a  recognition 
of  the  forces  of  nature  as  godlike,  stupendous,  personal 
agencies,  as  gods  and  demons.  Not  inconceivable  to 
us.  It  is  the  infant  thought  of  man  opening  itself ? 


THK  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  23 

with  awe  and  wonder,  on  this   ever-stupendous  uni- 
verse.    To  me  there  is  in  the  Norse  system  something 
very  genuine,  very  great  and  manlike.     A  broad  sim- 
plicity, rusticity,  so  very  different  from  the  light  grace- 
fulness of  the  old  Greek  paganism,  distinguishes  this 
Scandinavian  system.      It   is  thought;    the   genuine 
thought  of  deep,  rude,  earnest  minds,  fairly  opened 
to  the  things  about  them;  a  face-to-face  and  heart-to 
heart  inspection  of  the  things — the  first  characteristic 
of  all  good  thought  in  all  times.     Not  graceful  light- 
ness, half-sport,  as  in  the  Greek  paganism  ;    a  certain 
homely  truthfulness  and  rustic  strength,  a  great  rude 
sincerity,  discloses  itself  here.     It  is  strange,  after  our 
beautiful  Apollo  statues  and  clear  smiling  mythuses, 
to  come  down  upon  the  Norse  gods  "  brewing  ale  "  to 
hold  their  feast  with  Aegir,  the  Sea-Jotun ;  sending  out 
Thor  to  get  the  caldron  for  them  in  the  Jotun  country; 
Thor,  after  many  adventures,  clapping  the  pot  on  his 
head,  like  a  huge  hat,  and  walking  off  with  it — quite 
lost  in  it,  the  ears  of  the  pot  reaching  down  to  his 
heels !    A  kind  of  vacant  hugeness,  large  awkward 
gianthood,  characterizes  that  Norse  system ;  enormous 
force,  as  yet  altogether  untutored,  stalking  helpless 
with  large  uncertain  strides.     Consider  only  their  pri- 
mary mythus  of  the  creation.     The  gods  having  got 
the  giant  Ymer  slain,  a  giant  made  by  "  warm  wind," 
and  much  confused  work,  out  of  the  conflict  of  frost 
and  fire — determined  on  constructing  a  world  with 
him.     His  blood  made  the  sea ;  his  flesh  was  the  land, 
the  rocks  his  bones ;  of  his  eyebrows  they  formed  As- 
gard  their  gods'-d welling ;  his  skull  was  the  great  blue 
vault  of  immensity,  and  the  brains  of  it  became  the 
clouds.    What  a  hyper-brobdignagian  business !     Un- 
tamed   thought,  great,  giantlike,,  enormous }    to    be 


24  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

tamed  in  due  time  into  the  compact  greatness,  not 
giantlike,  but  godlike  and  stronger  than  gianthood,  of 
the  Shakespeare,  the  Goethes.  Spiritually  as  well  as 
bodily  these  men  are  our  progenitors. 

I  like,  too,  that  representation  they  have  of  the  tree 
igdrasil.  All  life  is  figured  by  them  as  a  tree.  Ig- 
drasil,  the  ash-tree  of  existence,  has'its  roots  deep-down 
in  the  kingdoms  of  hela  or  death  ;  its  trunk  reaches  up 
heaven-high,  spreads  its  boughs  over  the  whole  uni- 
verse :  it  is  the  tree  of  existence.  At  the  foot  of  it,  in 
the  death-kingdom,  sit  three  Nornas,  fates  —  the  past, 
present,  future  ;  watering  its  roots  from  the  sacred 
well.  Its  "boughs,"  with  their  buddings  and  dis- 
leafings  —  events,  things  suffered,  things  done,  catas- 
trophes —  stretch  through  all  lands  and  times.  Is  not 
every  leaf  of  it  a  biography,  every  -fiber  there  an  act 
or  word?  Its  boughs  are  histories  of  nations.  The 
rustle  of  it  is  the  noise  of  human  existence,  onward 
from  of  old.  It  grows  there,  the  breath  of  human 
passion  rustling  through  it  —  or  storrn-tossed,  the  storm- 
wind  howling  through  it  like  the  voice  of  all  the  gods. 
It  is  igdrasil,  the  tree  of  existence.  It  is  the  past,  the 
present  and  the  future  ;  what  was  done,  what  is  doing, 
what  will  be  done;  "the  infinite  conjugation  of  the 
verb  to  do"  Considering  how  human  things  circulate, 
each  inextricably  in  communion  with  all  —  how  the 
word  I  speak  to  you  to  day  is  borrowed,  not  from 
Ulfila  the  Moesogoth  only,  but  from  all  men  since  the 
first  man  began  to  speak  —  I  find  no  similtude  so  true 
as  this  of  a  tree.  Beautiful  ;  altogether  beautiful  and 
great.  The  "  machine  of  the  universe  "  —  alas,  do  but 
think  of  that  in  contrast  ! 


it  is  strange  enough  this  old  Norse  view  of 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  25 

nature;  different  enough  from  what  we  believe  of 
nature.  Whence  it  specially  came,  one  would  not  like 
to  be  compelled  to  say  very  minutely  !  One  thing  we 
may  say :  It  came  from  the  thoughts  of  Norse  men— 
from  the  thought,  above  all,  of  the  first  Norse  man 
who  had  an  original  power  of  thinking.  The  first 
Norse  "  man  of  genius,'  as  we  should  call  him !  In- 
numerable men  had  passed  by,  across  this  universe, 
with  a  dumb  vague  wonder,  such  as  the  very  animals 
may  feel ;  or  with  a  painful,  fruitlessly  inquiring  won- 
der, such  as  men  only  feel — till  the  great  thinker  came, 
the  original  man,  the  seer;  whose  shaped  spoken 
thought  awakes  the  slumbering  capability  of  all  into 
thought.  It  is  ever  the  way  with  the  thinker,  the  spir- 
itual hero.  What  he  says,  all  men  were  not  far  from 
saying,  were  longing  to  say.  The  thoughts  of  all  start 
up,  as  from  painful  enchanted  sleep,  round  his  thought ; 
answering  to  it,  Yes,  even  so  !  Joyful  to  men  as  the 
dawning  of  day  from  night — is  it  not,  indeed,  the 
awakening  for  them  from  no  being  into  being,  from 
death  into  life  ?  We  still  honor  such  a  man ;  call  him 
poet,  genius  and  so  forth  :  but  to  these  wild  men  he  was  a 
very  magician,  a  worker  of  miraculous  unexpected  bless- 
ing for  them  ;  a  prophet,  a  god !  Thought  once  awak- 
ened does  not  again  slumber ;  unfolds  itself  into  a  sys- 
tem of  thought ;  grows,  in  man  after  man,  generation 
after  generation — till  its  full  stature  is  reached  and 
such  system  of  thought  can  grow  no  further,  but  must 
give  place  to  another. 

For  the  Norse  people,  the  man  now  named  Odin  and 
chief  Norse  god,  we  fancy,  was  such  a  man.  A  teacher 
and  captain  of  soul  and  of  body ;  a  hero,  of  worth  im- 
measurable admiration  for  whom,  transcending  the 
known  bounds,  became  adoration.  Has  he  not  the 


26  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

power  of  articulate  thinking ;  and  many  other  powers, 
as  yet  miraculous?  So,  with  boundless  gratitude, 
would  the  rude  Norse  heart  feel.  Has  he  not  solved 
for  them  the  sphinx-enigma  of  this  universe ;  given  as- 
surance to  them  of  their  own  destiny  there  ?  By  him 
they  know  now  what  they  have  to  do  here,  what  to 
look  for  hereafter.  Existence  has  become  articulate, 
melodious  by  him  ;  he  first  has  made  life  alive!  We 
may  call  this  Odin,  the  origin  of  Norse  mythology : 
Odin,  or  whatever  name  the  first  Norse  thinker  bore 
while  he  was  a  man  among  men.  His  view  of  the  uni- 
verse once  promulgated,  a  like  view  starts  into  being 
in  all  minds  ;  grows,  keeps  ever  growing,  while  it  con- 
tinues credible  there.  In  all  minds  it  lay  written,  but 
invisibly,  as  in  sympathetic  ink  ;  at  his  word  it  starts 
into  visibility  in  all.  Nay,  in  every  epoch  of  the  world, 
the  great  event,  parent  of  all  others,  is  it  not  the  ar- 
rival of  a  thinker  in  the  world ! 

One  other  thing  we  must  not  forget ;  it  will  explain 
a  little  the  confusion  of  these  Norse  Eddas.  They  are 
not  one  coherent  system  of  thought ;  but  properly  the 
summation  of  several  successive  systems.  All  this  of 
the  old  Norse  belief  which  is  flung-out  for  us,  in  one 
level  of  distance  in  the  Edda,  like  a  picture  painted  on 
the  same  canvas,  does  not  at  all  stand  so  in  the  reality. 
It  stands  rather  at  all  manner  of  distances  and  depths, 
of  successive  generations  since  the  belief  first  began. 
All  Scandinavian  thinkers,  since  the  first  of  them,  con- 
tributed to  that  Scandinavian  system  of  thought ;  in 
ever-new  elaboration  and  addition,  it  is  the  combined 
work  of  them  all.  What  history  it  had,  how  it  changed 
from  shape  to  shape,  by  one  thinker's  contribution 
after  another,  till  it  got  to  the  full  final  shape  we  see 
it  under  in  the  JSdda,  no  man  will  now  ever  know ;  its 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  <tf 

Councils  of  Trebisond,  councils  of  Trent,  Athanasiuses, 
Dantes,  Luthers,  are  sunk  without  echo  in  the  dark 
night!  Only  that  it  had  such  a  history  we  can  all 
know.  Wheresoever  a  thinker  appeared,  there  in  the 
thing  he  thought-of  was  a  contribution,  accession,  a 
change  or  revolution  made.  Alas,  the  grandest  "  revo- 
lution "  of  all,  the  one  made  by  the  man  Odin  himself, 
is  not  this  too  sunk  for  us  like  the  rest !  Of  Odin 
what  history  ?  Strange  rather  to  reflect  that  he  had 
a  history  !  That  this  Odin,  in  his  wild  Norse  vesture, 
with  his  wild  beard  and  eyes,  his  rude  Norse  speech  and 
ways,  was  a  man  like  us;  with  our  sorrows,  joys,  with 
our  limbs,  features — intrinsically  all  one  as  we ;  and 
did  such  a  work !  But  the  work,  much  of  it,  has  per- 
ished ;  the  worker,  all  to  the  name.  " Wednesday" 
men  will  say  to-morrow ;  Odin's  day  !  Of  Odin  there 
exists  no  history  ;  no  document  of  it ;  no  guess  about 
it  worth  repeating. 

Snorro  indeed,  in  the  quietest  manner,  almost  in  a 
brief  business  style,  writes  down,  in  his  keimskringla, 
how  Odin  was  a  heroic  prince  in  the  Black  Sea  region, 
with  twelve  peers,  and  a  great  people  straitened  for 
room.  How  he  led  these  Asen  (Asiatics)  of  his  out  of 
Asia ;  settled  them  in  the  north  parts  of  Europe,  by 
warlike  conquest ;  invented  letters,  poetry  and  so  forth 
— and  came  by  and  by  to  be  worshiped  as  chief  god  by 
these  Scandinavians,  his  twelve  peers  made  into  twelve 
sons  of  his  own,  gods  like  himself;  Snorro  has  no  doubt 
of  this.  Saxo  Grammaticus,  a  very  curious  Northman 
of  that  same  century,  it  still  more  unhesitating ;  scru- 
ples not  to  find  out  a  historical  fact  in  every  individual 
my  thus,  and  writes  it  down  as  a  terrestrial  event  in 
Denmark  or  elsewhere.  Torfaeus,  learned  and  cautious, 
some  centuries  later,  assigns  by  calculation  a  date  for  it ; 


28  LKCTUHES  ON  1TKROK8. 

Odin,  he  says,  came  into  Europe  about  the  year  70 
before  Christ.  Of  all  which,  as  grounded  on  mere  un- 
certainties, found  to  be  untenable  now,  I  need  say 
nothing.  Far,  very  far  beyond  the  year  70!  Odin's 
date,  adventures,  whole  terrestrial  history,  figure  and 
environment  are  sunk  from  us  forever  into  unknown 
thousands  of  years. 

Nay  Grimm,  the  German  antiquary,  goes  so  far  as  to 
deny  that  any  man  Odin  ever  existed.  He  proves  it 
by  etymology.  The  word  Wuotan,  which  is  the  origi- 
nal form  of  Odin,  a  word  spread,  as  name  of  their 
chief  divinity,  over  all  the  Teutonic  nations  every- 
where ;  this  word,  which  connects  itself,  according  to 
Grimm,  with  the  Latin  vadere,  with  the  English  wade 
and  suchlike — means  primarily  movement,  source  of 
movement,  power ;  and  is  the  fit  name  of  the  highest 
god,  not  of  any  man.  The  word  signifies  divinity,  he 
says,  among  the  old  Saxon,  German  and  all  Teutonic 
nations ;  the  adjectives  formed  from  it  all  signify 
divine,  supreme,  or  something  pertaining  to  the  chief 
god.  Like  enough !  We  must  bow  to  Grimm  in 
matters  etymological.  Let  us  consider  it  fixed  that 
Wuotan  means  wading,  force  of  movement.  And  now 
still,  what  hinders  it  from  being  the  name  of  a  heroic 
man  and  mover,  as  well  as  of  a  god?  As  for  the  ad- 
jectives, and  words  formed  from  it — did  not  the  Span- 
iards in  their  universal  admiration  for  lope,  get  into 
the  habit  of  saying  " a  lope  flower,"  " a  lope  dama" 
if  the  flower  or  woman  were  of  surpassing  beauty  ? 
Had  this  lasted,  lope  would  have  grown,  in  Spain,  to  be 
an  adjective  signif}nng  godlike  also.  Indeed,  Adam 
Smith,  in  his  "Essay  on  Language,"  surmises  that  all 
adjectives  whatosever  were  formed  precisely  in  that 
way  ;  some  very  green  things,  chiefly  notable  for  its 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  29 

greenness,  got  the  appellative  name  green,  and  then  the 
next  thing  remarkable  for  that  quality,  a  tree  for  in- 
stance, was  named  the  green  tree — as  we  still  say  "the 
steam  coach,"  u  four-horse  coach,"  or  the  like.  All 
primary  adjectives,  according  to  Smith,  were  formed  in 
this  way  ;  were  at  first  substantives  and  things.  We 
cannot  annihilate  a  man  for  etymologies  like  that ! 
Surely  there  was  a  first  teacher  and  captain ;  surely 
there  must  have  been  an  Odin,  palpable  to  the  sense  at 
one  time ;  no  adjective,  but  a  real  hero  of  flesh  and 
blood !  The  voice  of  all  tradition,  history  or  echo  of 
history,  agrees  with  all  that  thought  will  teach  one 
about  it,  to  assure  us  of  this. 

How  the  man  Odin  came  to  be  considered  a  god.  the 
chief  god  ?  That  surely  is  a  question  which  nobody 
would  wish  to  dogmatize  upon.  I  have  said,  his  people 
knew  no  limits  to  their  admiration  of  him  ;  they  had 
as  yet  no  scale  to  measure  admiration  by.  Fancy  your 
own  generous  heart's  love  of  some  greatest  man  ex- 
panding till  it  transcended  all  bounds,  till  it  filled  and 
overflowed  the  whole  field  of  your  thought  !  Or  what 
if  this  man  Odin — since  a  great  deep  soul,  with  the  af- 
flatus and  mysterious  tide  of  vision  and  impulse  rush- 
ing on  him  he  knows  not  whence,  is  ever  an  enigma,  a 
kind  of  terror  and  wonder  to  himself — should  have  felt 
that  perhaps  he  was  divine  ;  that  he  was  some  effluence 
of  the  "Wuotan,"  "  movement"  supreme  power  and 
divinity,  of  whom  to  his  rapt  vision  all  nature  was  the 
awful  flame-image ;  that  some  effluence  of  Wuotan 
dwelt  here  in  him !  He  was  not  necessarily  false  ;  he 
was  but  mistaken,  speaking  the  truest  he  knew.  A 
great  soul,  any  sincere  soul,  knows  not  what  he  is — al- 
ternates between  the  highest  height  and  the  lowest 
depth  ;  can,  of  all  things,  the  least  measure — himself  ! 


30  LECTURES  ON  HUROES. 

What  others  take  him  for  and  what  he  guesses  that  he 
may  be  ;  these  two  items  strangely  act  on  one  another, 
help  to  determine  one  another.  With  all  men  rever- 
ently admiring  him  ;  with  his  own  wild  soul  full  of 
noble  ardors  and  affections,  of  whirlwind  chaotic  dark- 
ness and  glorious  new  light ;  a  divine  universe  bursting 
all  into  godlike  beauty  round  him  and  no  man  to  whom 
the  like  ever  had  befallen,  what  could  he  think  himself 
to  be  ?  "  Wuotan  ?  "  All  men  answered,  "  Wuotan  !  " 

And  then  consider  what  mere  time  will  do  in  such 
cases ;  how  if  a  man  was  great  while  living,  he  becomes 
tenfold  greater  when  dead.  What  an  enormous  camera- 
obscura  magnifier  is  tradition  !  How  a  thing  grows 
in  the  human  memory,  in  the  human  imagination,  when 
love,  worship  and  all  that  lies  in  the  human  heart,  is 
there  to  encourage  it.  And  in  the  darkness,  in  the  en- 
tire ignorance;  without  date  or  document,  no  book,  no 
Arundel-marble ;  only  here  and  there  some  dumb 
monumental  cairn.  Why,  in  thirty  or  forty  years, 
were  there  no  books,  any  great  man  would  grow  mythic, 
the  contemporaries  who  had  seen  him,  being  once  all 
dead.  And  in  three  hundred  years  and  in  three  thou- 
sand years To  attempt  theorizing  on  such  matters 

would  profit  little  :  they  are  matters  which  refuse  to 
be  iheoremed  and  diagramed ;  which  logic  ought  to 
know  that  she  cannot  speak  of.  Enough  for  us  to  dis- 
cern, far  in  the  uttermost  distance,  some  gleam  as  of  a 
small  real  light  shining  in  the  center  of  that  enormous 
camera-obscura  image ;  to  discern  that  the  center  of  it 
all  was  not  a  madness  and  nothing,  but  a  sanity  and 
something. 

This  light,  kindled  in  the  great  dark  vortex  of  the 
Norse  mind,  dark  but  living,  waiting  only  for  light ; 
this  is  to  me  the  center  of  the  whole.  How  such  light 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  31 

will  then  shine  out  and  with  wondrous  thousandfold 
expansion  spread  itself,  in  forms  and  colors,  depends 
not  on  it,  so  much  as  on  the  national  mind  recipient  of 
it.  The  colors  and  forms  of  your  light  will  be  those  of 
the  cut-glass  it  has  to  shine  through.  Curious  to  think 
how,  for  every  man,  any  the  truest  fact  is  modeled  by 
the  nature  of  the  man !  I  said,  the  earnest  man,  speak- 
ing to  his  brother  men,  must  always  have  stated  what 
seemed  to  him  &fact,  a  real  appearance  of  nature.  But 
the  way  in  which  such  appearance  or  fact  shaped  itself 
— what  sort  of  fact  it  became  for  him — was  and  is 
modified  by  his  own  laws  of  thinking ;  deep,  subtle, 
but  universal,  ever  operating  laws.  The  world  of  nat- 
ure, for  every  man,  is  the  phantasy  of  himself ;  this 
world  is  the  multiplex  "  image  of  his  own  dream." 
Who  knows  to  what  unnameable  subtleties  of  spiritual 
law  all  these  pagan  fables  owe  their  shape  !  The  num- 
ber twelve,  divisiblest  of  all,  which  could  be  halved, 
quartered,  parted  into  three,  into  six,  the  most  remark- 
able number — this  was  enough  to  determine  the  signs 
of  the  Zodiac,  the  number  of  Odin's  sons  and  innumer- 
able other  twelves.  Any  vague  rumor  of  number  had 
a  tendency  to  settle  itself  into  twelve.  So  with  regard 
to  every  other  matter.  And  quite  unconsciously  too— 
with  no  notion  of  building  up  "  allegories  !  "  But  the 
fresh  clear  glance  of  those  first  ages  would  be  prompt 
in  discerning  the  secret  relations  of  things,  and  wholly 
open  to  obey  these.  Schiller  finds  in  the  "  Cestus  of 
Yenus  "  an  everlasting  aesthetic  truth  as  to  the  nature 
of  all  beauty ;  curious — but  he  is  careful  not  to  insinu- 
ate that  the  old  Greek  mythists  had  any  notion  of 
lecturing  about  the  "  philosophy  of  criticism  ! "  On 
the  whole,  we  must  leave  those  boundless  regions. 
Cannot  we  conceive  that  Odin  was  a  reality  ?  Error 


32  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

indeed,  error  enough  :  but  sheer  falsehood,  idle  fables, 
allegory  aforethought — we  will  not  believe  that  our 
fathers  believed  in  these. 

Odin's  runes  are  a  significant  feature  of  him. 
Runes  and  the  miracles  of  "  magic "  he  worked  by 
them,  make  a  great  feature  in  tradition.  Runes  are 
the  Scandinavian  alphabet ;  suppose  Odin  to  have  been 
the  inventor  of  letters,  as  well  as  "  magic,"  among  that 
people!  It  is  the  greatest  invention  man  has  ever 
made,  this  of  marking  down  the  unseen  thought  that 
is  in  him  by  written  characters.  It  is  a  kind  of  second 
speech,  almost  as  miraculous  as  the  first.  You  remem- 
ber the  astonishment  and  incredulity  of  Atahualpa  the 
Peruvian  king  ;  how  he  made  the  Spanish  soldier  who 
was  guarding  him  scratch  dios  on  his  thumb-nail,  that 
he  might  try  the  next  soldier  with  it,  to  ascertain 
whether  such  a  miracle  was  possible.  If  Odin  brought 
letters  among  his  people,  he  might  work  magic 
enough ! 

"Writing  by  runes  has  some  air  of  being  original 
among  the  Norsemen  :  not  a  Phoenician  alphabet,  but 
a  native  Scandinavian  one.  Snorro  tells  us  further  that 
Odin  invented  poetry  ;  the  music  of  human  speech,  as 
well  as  that  miraculous  runic  marking  of  it.  Trans- 
port yourselves  into  the  early  childhood  of  nations ; 
the  first  beautiful  morning-light  of  our  Europe,  when 
all  yet  lay  in  fresh  young  radiance  as  of  a  great  sun- 
rise, and  our  Europe  was  first  beginning  to  think,  to 
be!  Wonder,  hope;  infinite  radiance  of  hope  and 
wonder,  as  of  a  young  child's  thoughts,  in  the  hearts 
of  these  strong  men  !  Strong  sons  of  nature  ;  and  here 
was  not  only  a  wild  captain  and  fighter ;  discerning 
with  his  wild  flashing  eyes  what  to  do,  with  his  wild 
lion-heart  daring  and  doing  it ;  but  a  poet  too,  all  that 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  33 

we  mean  by  a  poet,  prophet,  great  devout  thinker  and 
inventor — as  the  truly  great  man  ever  is.  A  hero  is  a 
hero  at  all  points ;  in  the  soul  and  thought  of  him 
first  of  all.  This  Odin,  in  his  rude  semi-articulate  way, 
had  a  word  to  speak.  A  great  heart  laid  open  to  take 
in  this  great  universe  and  man's  life  here,  and  utter  a 
great  word  about  it.  A  hero,  as  I  say,  in  his  rude 
manner ;  a  wise,  gifted,  noble-hearted  man.  And  now, 
if  we  still  admire  such  a  man  beyond  all  others,  what 
must  these  wild  Norse  souls,  first  awakened  into 
thinking,  have  made  of  him  !  To  them,  as  yet  without 
names  for  it,  he  was  noble  and  noblest ;  hero,  prophet, 
god ;  Wuotan,  the  greatest  of  all.  Thought  is  thought, 
however  it  speak  or  spell  itself.  Intrinsically,  I  con- 
jecture, this  Odin  must  have  been  of  the  same  sort  of 
stuff  as  the  greatest  kind  of  men.  A  great  thought  in 
the  wild  deep  heart  of  him  I  The  rough  words  he 
articulated,  are  they  not  the  rudimental  roots  of  those 
English  words  we  still  use  !  He  worked  so,  in  that  ob- 
scure element.  But  he  was  as  a  light  kindled  in  it ;  a 
light  of  intellect,  rude  nobleness  of  heart,  the  only 
kind  of  lights  we  have  yet ;  a  hero,  as  I  say :  and  he 
had  to  shine  there  and  make  his  obscure  element  a 
little  lighter — as  is  still  the  task  of  us  all. 

We  will  fancy  him  to  be  the  type  Norseman ;  the 
finest  Teuton  whom  that  race  has  yet  produced.  The 
rude  Norse  heart  burst  up  into  'boundless  admiration 
round  him;  into  adoration.  He  is  as  a  root  of  so 
many  great  things  ;  the  fruit  of  him  is  found  growing, 
from  deep  thousands  of  years,  over  the  whole  field  of 
Teutonic  life.  Our  own  Wednesday,  as  I  said,  is  it 
not  still  Odin's  day?  Wednesday,  Wansborough, 
Wanstead,  Wandsworth  :  Odin  grew  into  England  too, 
these  are  still  leaves  from  that  root!  He  was  the 


34  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

chief  god  to  all  the  Teutonic  peoples ;  their  pattern 
Norseman — in  such  way  did  they  admire  their  pattern 
Norseman  ;  that  was  the  fortune  he  had  in  the  world. 
Thus  if  the  man  Odin  himself  have  vanished  utterly, 
there  is  this  hugh  shadow  of  him  which  still  projects 
itself  over  the  whole  history  of  his  people.  For  this 
Odin  once  admitted  to  be  god,  we  can  understand  well 
that  the  whole  Scandinavian  scheme  of  nature,  or  dim 
no-scheme,  whatever  it  might  before  have  been,  would 
now  begin  to  develop  itself  altogether  differently  and 
grow  thenceforth  in  a  new  manner.  What  this  Odin 
saw  into,  and  taught  with  his  runes  and  his  rhymes, 
the  whole  Teutonic  people  laid  to  heart  and  carried 
forward.  His  way  of  thought  became  their  way  of 
thought — such,  under  new  conditions,  is  the  history  of 
every  great  thinker  still.  In  gigantic  confused  linea- 
ments, like  some  enormous  camera-obscura  shadow 
thrown  upward  from  the  dead  deeps  of  the  past,  and 
covering  the  whole  northern  heaven,  is  not  that  Scan- 
dinavian mythology  in  some  sort  the  portraiture  of 
this  man  Odin  ?  The  gigantic  image  of  his  natural 
face,  legible  or  not  legible  there,  expanded  and  confused 
in  that  manner !  Ah,  thought,  I  say,  is  always  thought. 
\L  /No  great  man  lives  in  vain.  The  history  of  the  world 
is  but  the  biography  of  great  men. 

To  me  there  is  something  very  touching  in  this 
primeval  figure  of  heroism ;  in  such  artless,  helpless, 
but  hearty  entire  reception  of  a  hero  by  his  fellow  men. 
Never  so  helpless  in  shape,  it  is  the  noblest  of  feelings, 
and  a  feeling  in  some  shape  or  other  perennial  as  man 
himself.  If  I  could  show  in  any  measure,  what  I  feel 
deeply  for  a  long  time  now,  that  it  is  the  vital  element 
of  manhood,  the  soul  of  man's  history  here  in  our 
world — it  would  be  the  chief  use  of  this  discoursing  at 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  35 

present.  We  do  not  now  call  our  great  men  gods,  nor 
admire  without  limit ;  ah,  no,  with  limit  enough  !  But 
if  we  have  no  great  men,  or  do  not  admire  at  all — that 
were  a  still  worse  case. 

This  poor  Scandinavian  hero-worship,  that  whole 
Norse  way  of  looking  at  the  universe  and  adjusting 
oneself  there,  has  an  indestructible  merit  for  us.  A 
rude  childlike  way  of  recognizing  the  divineness  of 
nature,  the  divineness  of  man ;  most  rude,  yet  heart- 
felt, robust,  giantlike ;  betokening  what  a  giant  of  a 
man  this  child  would  yet  grow  to  !  It  was  a  truth 
and  is  none.  Is  it  not  as  the  half-dumb  stifled  voice  of 
the  long-buried  generations  of  our  own  fathers,  calling 
out  of  the  depths  of  ages  to  us,  in  whose  veins  their 
blood  still  runs :  "  This  then,  this  is  what  we  made  of 
the  world :  this  is  all  the  image  and  notion  we  could 
form  to  ourselves  of  this  great  mystery  of  a  life  and 
universe.  Despise  it  not.  You  are  raised  high  above 
it,  to  large  free  scope  of  vision ;  but  you  too  are  not 
yet  at  the  top.  No,  your  notion  too,  so  much  enlarged, 
is  but  a  partial,  imperfect  one  ;  that  matter  is  a  thing 
no  man  will  ever,  in  time  or  out  of  time,  comprehend ; 
after  thousands  of  years  of  ever-new  expansion,  man 
will  find  himself  but  struggling  to  comprehend  again  a 
part  of  it :  the  thing  is  larger  than  man,  not  to  be 
comprehended  by  him  ;  an  infinite  thing ! " 

The  essence  of  the  Scandinavian,  as  indeed  of  all 
pagan  mythologies,  we  found  to  be  recognition  of  the 
divineness  of  nature  ;  sincere  communion  of  man  with 
the  mysterious  invisible  powers  visibly  seen  at  work  in 
the  world  round  him.  This,  I  should  say,  is  more  sin- 
cerely done  in  the  Scandinavian  than  in  any  mythology 
I  know,  Sincerity  i§  the  great  characteristic  of  it, 


36  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

I  Superior  sincerity  (far  superior)  consoles  us  for  the 
\  total  want  of  old  Grecian  grace.  Sincerity,  I  think,  is 
better  than  grace.  I  feel  that  these  old  Northmen 
were  looking  into  nature  with  open  eye  and  soul :  most 
earnest,  honest ;  childlike  and  yet  manlike ;  with  a 
great-hearted  simplicity  and  depth  and  freshness,  in  a 
true,  loving,  admiring,  unfearing  way.  A  right  valiant, 
true  old  race  of  men.  Such  recognition  of  nature  one 
finds  to  be  the  chief  element  of  paganism  :  recognition 
of  man  and  his  moral  duty,  though  this  too  is  not 
wanting,  comes  to  be  the  chief  element  only  in  purer 
forms  of  religion.  Here,  indeed,  is  a  great  distinction 
and  epoch  in  human  beliefs  ;  a  great  landmark  in  the 
religious  development  of  mankind.  Man  first  puts 
himself  in  relation  with  nature  and  her  powers,  won- 
ders and  worships  over  those ;  not  till  a  later  epoch 
does  he  discern  that  all  power  is  moral,  that  the  grand 
point  is  the  distinction  for  him  of  good  and  evil,  of 
Thou  shalt  and  Thou  shalt  not. 

"With  regard  to  all  these  fabulous  delineations  in  the 
Edda,  I  will  remark,  moreover,  as  indeed  was  already 
hinted,  that  most  probably  they  must  have  been  of 
much  newer  date  ;  most  probably,  even  from  the  first, 
were  comparatively  idle  for  the  old  Norsemen  and  as 
it  were  a  kind  of  poetic  sport.  Allegory  and  poetic 
delineation,  as  I  said  above,  cannot  be  religious  faith  ; 
the  faith  itself  must  first  be  there,  then  allegory 
enough  will  gather  round  it,  as  the  fit  body  round  its 
soul.  The  Norse  faith,  I  can  well  suppose,  like  other 
faiths,  was  most  active  while  it  lay  mainly  in  the 
silent  state  and  had  not  yet  much  to  say  about  itself, 
still  less  to  sing. 

Among  those  shadowy  Eclda  matters,  amid  all  that 
fantastic  congeries  of  assertions  and  traditions,  in  their 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  37 

musical  mythologies,  the  main  practical  belief  a  man 
could  have  was  probably  not  much  more  than  this  :  of 
the  Valkyrs  and  the  Hall  of  Odin  ;  of  an  inflexible 
destiny ;  and  that  the  one  thing  needful  for  a  man 
was  to  l)e  brave.  The  Valkyrs  are  choosers  of  the 
slain ;  a  destiny  inexorable,  which  it  is  useless  trying 
to  bend  or  soften,  has  appointed  who  is  to  be  slain ; 
this  was  a  fundamental  point  for  the  Norse  believer — 
as  indeed  it  is  for  all  earnest  men  everywhere,  for  a 
Mohamet,  a  Luther,  for  a  Napoleon  too.  It  lies  at  the 
basis  this  for  every  such  man ;  it  is  the  woof  out  of 
which  his  whole  system  of  thought  is  woven.  The 
Valkyrs  ;  and  then  that  these  Choosers  lead  the  brave 
to  a  heavenly  Hall  of  Odin  ;  only  the  base  and  slavish 
being  thrust  elsewhither,  into  the  realms  of  Hela  the 
death-goddess :  I  take  this  to  have  been  the  soul  of  the 
whole  Norse  belief.  They  understood  in  their  heart 
that  it  was  indispensable  to  be  brave;  that  Odin  would 
have  no  favor  for  them,  but  despise  and  thrust  them 
out,  if  they  were  not  brave.  Consider  too  whether 
there  is  not  something  in  this !  It  is  an  everlasting 
duty,  valid  in  our  day  as  in  that,  the  duty  of  being 
brave.  Valor  is  still  value.  The  first  duty  for  a  man 
is  still  that  "of  subduing /<w.  "We  must  get  rid  of 
fear ;  we  cannot  act  at  all  till  then.  A  man's  acts  are 
slavish,  not  true  but  specious ;  his  very  thoughts  are 
false,  he  thinks  too  as  a  slave  and  coward,  till  he  have 
got  fear  under  his  feet.  Odin's  creed,  if  we  disentangle 
the  real  kernel  of  it,  is  true  to  this  hour.  A  man  shall 
and  must  be  valiant ;  he  must  march  forward  and  quit 
himself  like  a  man — trusting  imperturbably  in  the  ap- 
pointment and  choice  of  the  upper  powers  ;  and,  on  the 
whole,  not  fear  at  all.  Now  and  always,  the  com- 
pleteness of  his  victory  over  fear  will  determine  how 
much  of  a  man  he  is. 


38  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

It  is  doubtless  very  savage  that  kind  of  valor  of  the 
old  Northmen.  Snorro  tells  us  they  thought  it  a  shame 
and  misery  not  to  die  in  battle  ;  and  if  natural  death 
seemed  to  be  coming  on,  they  would  cut  wounds  in  their 
flesh,  that  Odin  might  receive  them  as  warriors  slain. 
Old  kings,  about  to  die,  had  their  body  laid  into  a  ship ; 
the  ship  sent  forth,  with  sails  set  and  slow  fire  burning 
it ;  that,  once  out  at  sea,  it  might  blaze  up  in  flame 
and  in  such  manner  bury  worthily  the  old  hero,  at 
once  in  the  sky  and  in  the  ocean  !  Wild  bloody  valor ; 
yet  valor  of  its  kind  ;  better,  I  say,  than  none.  In  the 
old  sea-kings  too,  what  an  indomitable  rugged  energy ! 
Silent,  Avith  closed  lips,  as  I  fancy  them,  unconscious 
that  they  Avere  specially  brave  ;  defying  the  wild  ocean 
with  its  monsters  and  all  men  and  things — progenitors 
of  our  own  Blakes  and  Nelsons !  No  Homer  sung 
these  Norse  sea-kings  ;  but  Agamemnon's  was  a  small 
audacity  and  of  small  fruit  in  the  world,  to  some  of 
them — to  Hrolf  s  of  Normandy,  for  instance  !  Hrolf, 
or  Rollo  Duke  of  Normandy,  the  wild  sea-king,  has  a 
share  in  governing  England  at  this  hour. 

Nor  was  it  altogether  nothing,  even  that  wild  sea- 
roving  and  battling,  through  so  many  generations.  It 
needed  to  be  ascertained  which  was  the  strongest  kind 
of  men ;  who  were  to  be  ruler  over  whom.  Among 
the  Northland  sovereigns,  too,  I  find  some  who  got  the 
title  wood-cutter ;  forest-felling  kings.  Much  lies  in 
that.  I  suppose  at  bottom  many  of  them  were  forest- 
fellers  as  well  as  fighters,  though  the  Skalds  talk 
mainly  of  the  latter— misleading  certain  critics  not  a 
little ;  for  no  nation  of  men  could  ever  live  by  fighting 
alone ;  there  could  not  produce  enough  come  out  of 
that !  I  suppose  the  right  good  fighter  was  oftenest 
also  the  right  good  forest-feller— the  right  good  in> 


'THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  39 

prover,  discerner,  doer  and  worker  in  every  kind ;  for 
true  valor,  different  enough  from  ferocity,  is  the  basis 
of  all.  A  more  legitimate  kind  of  valor  that ;  showing 
itself  against  the  untamed  forests  and  dark  brute 
powers  of  nature,  to  conquer  nature  for  us.  In  the 
same  direction  have  not  we  their  descendants  since 
carried  it  far  ?  May  such  valor  last  forever  with  us ! 

That  the  man  Odin,  speaking  with  a  hero's  voice  and 
heart,  as  with  an  impressiveness  out  of  heaven,  told 
his  people  the  infinite  importance  of  valor,  how  man 
thereby  became  a  god ;  and  that  his  people,  feeling  a 
response  to  it  in  their  own  hearts,  believed  this  mes- 
sage of  his,  and  thought  it  a  message  out  of  heaven,  and 
him  a  divinity  for  telling  it  them :  this  seems  to  me 
the  primary  seed-grain  of  the  Norse  religion,  from 
which  all  manner  of  mythologies,  symbolic  practices, 
speculations,  allegories,  songs  and  sagas  would  naturally 
grow.  Grow — how  strangely !  I  called  it  a  small 
light  shining  and  shaping  in  the  high  vortex  of  Norse 
darkness.  Yet  the  darkness  itself  was  alive  ;  consider 
that.  It  was  the  eager  inarticulate  uninstructed  mind 
of  the  whole  Norse  people,  longing  only  to  become 
articulate,  to  go  on  articulating  ever  further !  The 
living  doctrine  grows,  grows — like  a  Banyan-tree ;  the 
first  seed  is  the  essential  thing :  any  branch  strikes  it- 
self down  into  the  earth,  becomes  a  new  root ;  and  so, 
in  endless  complexity,  we  have  a  whole  wood,  a  whole 
jungle,  one  seed  the  parent  of  it  all.  "Was  not  the 
whole  Norse  religion,  accordingly,  in  some  sense,  what 
we  called  "  the  enormous  shadow  of  this  man's  like- 
ness?" Critics  trace  some  affinity  in  some  Norse 
mythuses,  of  the  creation  and  suchlike,  with  those  of 
the  Hindoos.  The  cow  Adumbla,  "  licking  the  rime 
from  the  rocks,"  has  a  kind  of  Hindoo  look,  A  Hindoo 


40  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

cow,  transported  into  frosty  countries.  Probable 
enough  ;  indeed  we  may  say  undoubtedly,  these  things 
will  have  a  kindred  with  the  remotest  lands,  with  the 
earliest  times.  Thought  does  not  die,  but  only  is 
changed.  The  first  man  that  began  to  think  in  this 
planet  of  ours,  he  was  the  beginner  of  all.  And  then 
the  second  man  and  the  third  man — nay,  every  true 
thinker  to  this  hour  is  a  kind  of  Odin,  teaches  men  his 
way  of  thought,  spreads  a  shadow  of  his  own  likeness 
ovei  sections  of  the  history  of  the  world. 

Of  the  distinctive  poetic  character  or  merit  of  this 
Norse  mythology  I  have  not  room  to  speak ;  nor  does 
it  concern  us  much.  Some  wild  prophesies  we  have, 
as  the  Voluspa  in  the  Elder  Edda  ;  of  a  rapt,  earnest, 
sibylline  sort.  But  they  were  comparatively  an  idle 
adjunct  of  the  matter,  men  who  as  it  were  but  toyed 
with  the  matter,  these  later  Skalds ;  and  it  is  their 
songs  chiefly  that  survive.  In  later  centuries,  I  sup- 
pose, they  would  go  on  singing,  poetically  symbolizingj 
as  our  modern  painters  paint,  when  it  was  no  longer 
from  the  innermost  heart,  or  not  from  the  heart  at  all. 
This  is  everywhere  to  be  well  kept  in  mind. 

Gray's  fragments  of  Norse  lore,  at  any  rate,  will 
give  one  no  notion  of  it — any  more  than  Pope  will  of 
Homer.  It  is  no  square-built  gloomy  palace  of  black 
ashlar  marble,  shrouded  in  awe  and  horror,  as  Gray 
gives  it  us :  no ;  rough  as  the  north  rocks,  as  the  Ice- 
land deserts,  it  is  ;  with  a  heartiness,  homeliness,  even 
a  tint  of  good  humor  and  robust  mirth  in  the  middle 
of  these  fearful  things.  The  strong  old  Norse  heart 
did  not  go  upon  theatrical  sublimities ;  they  had  not 
time  to  tremble.  I  like  much  their  robust  simplicity; 
their  veracity,  directness  of  conception.  Thor  "  draws 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  41 

down  his  brows  "  in  veritable  Norse  rage :  "  grasps  his 
hammer  till  the  'knuckles  grow  white"  Beautiful  traits 
of  pity  too,  an  honest  pity.  Balder  "  the  white  god  " 
dies :  the  beautiful,  benignant :  he  is  the  Sungod. 
They  try  all  nature  for  a  remedy :  but  he  is  dead. 
Frigga,  his  mother,  sends  Hermoder  to  seek  or  see 
him :  nine  days  and  nine  nights  he  rides  through 
gloomy  deep  valleys,  a  labyrinth  of  gloom  ;  arrives  at 
the  bridge  with  its  gold  roof :  the  keeper  says,  "  Yes, 
Balder  did  pass  here  ;  but  the  kingdom  of  the  dead  is 
down  yonder,  far  toward  the  north."  Hermoder  rides 
on  ;  leaps  hell-gate,  Hela's  gate ;  does  see  Balder  and 
speak  with  him :  Balder  cannot  be  delivered.  Inexor- 
able !  Hela  will  not,  for  Odin  or  any  god,  give 
him  up.  The  beautiful  and  gentle  has  to  remain  there. 
His  wife  had  voluteered  to  go  with  him,  to  die  with 
him.  They  shall  forever  remain  there.  He  sends  his 
ring  to  Odin ;  Nanna,  his  wife,  sends  her  thimble  to 
Frigga,  as  a  remembrance — Ah  me  ! 

For  indeed  valor  is  the  fountain  of  pity  too — of 
truth  and  all  that  is  great  and  good  in  man.  The 
robust  homely  vigor  of  the  Norse  heart  attaches  one 
much,  in  these  delineations.  Is  it  not  a  trait  of  right 
honest  strength,  says  Uhland,  who  has  written  a  fine 
essay  on  Thor,  that  the  old  Norse  heart  finds  its 
friend  in  the  thunger-god?  That  it  is  not  frightened 
away  by  his  thunder ;  but  finds  that  summer-heat,  the 
beautiful  noble  summer,  must  and  will  have  thunder 
withal !  The  Norse  heart  loves  this  Thor  and  his  ham- 
mer-bolt ;  sports  with  him.  Thor  is  summer-heat ;  the 
god  of  peaceable  industry  as  well  as  thunder.  He  is 
the  peasant's  friend  ;  his  true  henchmen  and  attendant 
is  Thialfi,  manual  labor.  Thor  himself  engages  in  all 
manner  of  rough  manual  work,  scorns  no  business  for 


42  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

its  plebeianism ;  is  ever  and  anon  traveling  to  the 
country  of  the  Jotuns,  harrying  those  chaotic  frost-mon- 
sters, subduing  them,  at  least  straightening  and  dam- 
aging them.  There  is  a  great  broad  humor  in  some  of 
these  things. 

Thor,  as  we  saw  above,  goes  to  Jotun-land,  to  seek 
Hymir's  caldron,  that  the  gods  may  brew  beer.  Hy- 
mir  the  huge  giant  enters,  his  gray  beard  all  full  of 
hoar-frost ;  splits  pillars  with  the  very  glance  of 
his  eye:  Thor,  after  much  rough  tumult,  snatches 
the  pot,  claps  it  on  his  head  ;  the  "  handles  of  it 
reach  down  to  his  heels."  The  Norse  Skald  has  a 
kind  of  loving  sport  with  Thor.  This  is  the  Hymir 
whose  cattle,  the  critics  have  discovered,  are  icebergs. 
Huge  untutored  brobdignag  genius — needing  only  to 
•be  tamed  down  ;  into  Shakespeares,  Dantes,  Goethes! 
It  is  all  gone  now,  that  old  Norse  work — Thor  the 
thunder-god  changed  into  Jack  the  Giant-killer :  but 
the  mind  that  made  it  is  here  yet.  How  strangely 
things  grow  and  die,  and  do  not  die  !  There  are  twigs 
of  that  great  world-tree  of  Norse  belief  still  curiously 
traceable.  This  poor  Jack  of  the  nursery,  with  his 
miraculous  shoes  of  swiftness,  coat  of  darkness,  sword 
of  sharpness,  he  is  one.  Hynde  Etin  and  still  more 
decisively  Red  Etin  of  Ireland,  in  the  Scottish  ballads, 
these  are  both  derived  from  Norseland ;  Etin  is  evi- 
dently a  Jotun.  Nay,  Shakespeare's  Hamlet  is  a  twig 
too  of  this  same  world-tree ;  there  seems  no  doubt  of 
that.  Hamlet,  Amleth,  I  find,  is  really  a  mythic  per- 
sonage ;  and  his  tragedy,  of  the  poisoned  father,  pois- 
oned asleep  by  drops  in  his  ear  and  the  rest,  is  a  Norse 
my  thus!  Old  Saxo,  as  his  wont  was,  made  it  a  Danish 
history  ;  Shakespeare,  out  of  Saxo,  made  it  what  we 
see.  That  is  a  twig  of  the  world-tree  that  has 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  43 

grown,  I  think — by  nature  or  accident  that  one  has 
grown ! 

In  fact,  these  old  ."N"orse  songs  have  a  truth  in  them, 
an  inward  perennial  truth  and  greatness — as,  indeed, 
all  must  have  that  can  very  long  preserve  itself  by 
tradition  alone.  It  is  a  greatness  not  of  mere  body 
and  gigantic  bulk,  but  a  rude  greatness  of  soul.  There 
is  a  sublime  uncomplaining  melancholy  traceable  in 
these  old  hearts.  A  great  free  glance  into  the  very 
deeps  of  thought.  They  seem  to  have  seen,  these 
brave  old  Northmen,  what  meditation  has  taught  all 
men  in  all  ages,  that  this  world  is  after  all  but  a  show 
— a  phenomenon  or  appearance,  no  real  thing.  All 
deep  souls  see  into  that — the  Hindoo  mythologist,  the 
German  philosopher  —  the  Shakespeare,  the  earnest 
thinker,  wherever  he  may  be : 

"  We  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of  ! " 

One  of  Thor's  expeditions,  to  Utgard  (the  outer  gar- 
den, central  seat  of  Jotun-land),  is  remarkable  in  this 
respect.  Thialfi  was  with  him  and  Loke.  After  vari- 
ous adventures,  they  entered  upon  giant-land;  wan- 
dered over  plains,  wild  uncultivated  places,  among 
stones  and  trees.  At  nightfall  they  noticed  a  house  ; 
and  as  the  door,  which  indeed  formed  one  whole  side 
of  the  house,  was  open,  they  entered.  It  was  a  simple 
habitation ;  one  large  hall,  altogether  empty.  They 
stayed  there.  Suddenly  in  the  dead  of  the  night  loud 
noises  alarmed  them.  Thor  grasped  his  hammer; 
stood  in  the  door,  prepared  for  fight.  His  companions 
within  ran  hither  and  thither  in  their  terror,  seeking 
some  outlet  in  that  rude  hall ;  they  found  a  little  closet 
at  last  and  took  refuge  there.  Neither  had  Thor  any 
battle  :  for,  lo,  in  the  morning  it  turned  out  that  the 


44  LEOTUnES  Oft  HEROES. 

noise  had  been  only  the  snoring  of  a  certain  enormous 
but  peaceable  giant,  the  giant  Skrymir,  who  lay  peace- 
ably sleeping  near  by ;  and  this  that  they  took  for  a 
house  was  merely  his  glove,  thrown  aside  there ;  the 
door  was  the  glove-wrist ;  the  little  closet  they  had 
fled  into  was  the  thumb  !  Such  a  glove — I  remark  too 
that  it  had  not  fingers  as  ours  have,  but  only  a 
thumb  and  the  rest  undivided :  a  most  ancient,  rustic 
glove ! 

Skrymir  now  carried  their  portmanteau  all  day ; 
Thor,  however,  had  his  own  suspicions,  did  not  like  the 
ways  of  Skrymir  ;  determined  at  night  to  put  an  end 
to  him  as  he  slept.  Raising  his  hammer,  he  struck 
down  into  the  giant's  face  a  right  thunderbolt  blow,  of 
force  to  rend  rocks.  The  giant  merely  awoke  ;  rubbed 
his  chee'k  and  said  :  "  Did  a  leaf  fall  ?  "  Again  Thor 
struck,  so  soon  as  Skrymir  again  slept ;  a  better  blow 
than  before ;  but  the  giant  only  murmured :  "  Was 
that  a  grain  of  sand  ? "  Thor's  third  stroke  was  with 
both  his  hands  (the  "  knuckles  white  "  I  suppose)  and 
seemed  to  dint  deep  into  Skrymir's  visage ;  but  he 
merely  checked  his  snore  and  remarked  :  "  There  must 
be  sparrows  roosting  in  this  tree,  I  think  ;  what  is  that 
they  have  dropped  ?  "  At  the  gate  of  Utgard,  a  place 
so  high  that  you  had  to  "strain  your  neck  bending 
back  to  see  the  top  of  it,"  Skrymir  went  his  ways. 
Thor  and  his  companions  were  admitted ;  invited  to 
take  share  in  the  games  going  on.  To  Thor,  for  his 
part,  they  handed  a  drinking-horn ;  it  was  a  common 
feat,  they  told  him,  to  drink  this  dry  at  one  draught. 
Long  and  fiercely,  three  times  over,  Thor  drank ;  but 
made  hardly  any  impression.  He  was  a  weak  child 
they  told  him :  could  he  lift  that  cat  he  saw  there  ? 
Small  as  the  feat  seemed,  Thor  with  his  whole  godlike 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  45 

Strength  could  not ;  he  bent  up  the  creature's  back, 
could  not  raise  its  feet  off  the  ground,  could  at  the  ut- 
most raise  one  foot.  "  Why,  you  are  no  man,"  said  the 
Utgard  people  ;  there  is  an  old  woman  that  will  wrestle 
you !  Thor,  heartily  ashamed,  seized  this  haggard  old 
woman  ;  but  could  not  throw  her. 

And  now,  on  their  quitting  Utgard,  the  chief  Jotun, 
escorting  them  politely  a  little  way,  said  to  Thor : 
"  You  are  beaten  then — yet  be  not  so  much  ashamed  ; 
there  was  deception  of  appearance  in  it.  That  horn 
you  tried  to  drink  was  the  sea  ;  you  did  make  it  ebb  ; 
but  who  could  drink  that,  the  bottomless !  The  cat 
you  would  have  lifted — why,  that  is  the  midyard- 
snake,  the  great  world-serpent,  which,  tail  in  mouth, 
girds  and  keeps  up  the  whole  created  world  ;  had  you 
torn  that  up,  the  world  must  have  rushed  to  ruin  !  As 
for  the  old  wom$n,  she  was  time,  old  age,  duration : 
with  her  what  can  wrestle  ?  No  man  nor  no  god  with 
her ;  gods  or  men,  she  prevails  over  all !  And  then 
those  three  strokes  you  struck — look  at  these  three 
valleys ;  your  three  strokes  made  these ! "  Thor 
looked  at  his  attendant  Jotun  :  itwasSkrymir — it  was, 
say  Norse  critics,  the  old  chaotic  rocky  earth  in  person 
and  that  glove-house  was  some  earth-cavern !  But 
Skrymir  had  vanished  ;  Utgard  with  its  skyhigh  gates, 
when  Thor  grasped  his  hammer  to  smite  them,  had 
gone  to  air  ;  only  the  giant's  voice  was  heard  mocking: 
"  Better  come  no  more  to  Jotunheim  ! " 

This  is  of  the  allegoric  period,  as  we  see,  and,  half 
play,  not  of  the  prophetic  and  entirely  devout :  but  as 
a  mythus  is  there  not  real  antique  Norse  gold  in  it  ? 
More  true  metal,  rough  from  the  mimer-stithy,  than  in 
many  a  famed  Greek  mythus  shaped  far  better  !  A 
great  broad  brobdignag  grin  of  true  humor  is  in  this 


46  LKCTURBS  ON  UEROE8. 

Skrymir ;  mirth  resting  on  earnestness  and  sadness,  as 
the  rainbow  on  black  tempest :  only  a  right  valiant 
heart  is  capable  of  that.  It  is  the  grim  humor  of  our 
own  Ben  Jonson,  rare  old  Ben ;  runs  in  the  blood  of  us, 
I  fancy ;  for  one  catches  tones  of  it,  under  a  still  other 
shape,  out  of  the  American  backwoods. 

That  is  also  a  very  striking  conception  that  of  the 
ragncvrok,  consummation,  or  twilight  of  the  gods.  It  is 
in  the  Voluspa  song ;  seemingly  a  very  old,  prophetic 
idea.  The  gods  and  Jotuns,  the  divine  powers  and  the 
chaotic  brute  ones,  after  long  contest  and  partial  vic- 
tory by  the  former,  meet  at  last  in  universal  world- 
embracing  wrestle  and  duel ;  world-serpent  against 
Thor,  strength  against  strength  ;  mutually  extinctive ; 
and  ruin,  "  twilight  "  sinking  into  darkness,  swallows 
the  created  universe.  The  old  universe  with  its  gods 
is  sunk  ;  but  it  is  not  final  death  :  there  is  to  be  a  new 
heaven  and  a  new  earth ;  a  hig'her  supreme  god  and 
justice  to  reign  among  men.  Curious  this  law  of  mu- 
tation, which  also  is  a  law  written  in  man's  inmost 
thought,  had  been  deciphered  by  these  old  earnest 
thinkers  in  their  rude  style  ;  and  how,  though  all  dies, 
and  even  gods  die,  yet  all  death  is  but  a  phoenix  fire- 
death  and  new-birth  into  the  greater  and  the  better  ! 
It  is  the  fundamental  law  of  being  for  a  creature  made 
of  time,  living  in  this  place  of  hope.  All  earnest  men 
have  seen  into  it ;  may  still  see  into  it. 

And  now,  connected  with  this,  let  us  glance  at  the 
last  my  thus  of  the  appearance  of  Thor  ;  and  end  there. 
I  fancy  it  to  be  the  latest  in  date  of  all  these  fables  ;  a 
sorrowing  protest  against  the  advance  of  Christianity 
— set  forth  reproachfully  by  some  conservative  pagan. 
King  Olaf  has  been  harshly  blamed  for  his  over-zeal  in 
introducing  Christianity  ;  surely  I  should  have  blamed 


THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY.  47 

him  far  more  for  an  under-zeal  in  that !  He  paid  dear 
enough  for  it ;  he  died  by  the  revolt  of  his  pagan 
people,  in  battle,  in  the  year  1023,  at  Stickelstad,  near 
that  Drontheim,  where  the  chief  cathedral  of  the  north 
has  now  stood  for  many  centuries,  dedicated  gratefully 
to  his  memory  as  Saint  Olaf.  The  mythus  about  Thor 
is  to  this  effect.  King  Olaf,  the  Christian  reform  king, 
is  sailing  with  fit  escort  along  the  shore  of  Norway, 
from  haven  to  haven ;  dispensing  justice,  or  doing 
other  royal  work :  on  leaving  a  certain  haven,  it  is 
found  that  a  stranger,  of  grave  eyes  and  aspect,  red 
beard,  of  stately  robust  figure,  has  stepped  in.  The 
courtiers  address  him  ;  his  answers  surprise  by  their 
pertinency  and  depth :  at  length  he  is  brought  to  the 
king.  The  stranger's  conversation  here  is  not  less  re- 
markable, as  they  sail  along  the  beautiful  shore ;  but 
after  some  time,  he  addresses  King  Olaf  thus  :  "  Yes, 
King  Olaf,  it  is  all  beautiful,  with  the  sun  shining  on  it 
there  ;  green,  fruitful,  a  right  fair  home  for  you  ;  and 
many  a  sore  day  had  Thor,  many  a  wild  fight  with 
the  rock  Jotuns,  before  he  could  make  it  so.  And  now 
you  seem  minded  to  put  away  Thor.  King  Olaf,  have 
a  care  !  "  said  the  stranger,  drawing  down  his  brows — 
and  when  they  looked  again,  he  was  nowhere  to  be 
found.  This  is  the  last  appearance  of  Ttor  on  the 
the  stage  of  this  world  ! 

Do  we  not  see  well  enough  how  the  fable  might 
arise,  without  unveracity  on  the  part  of  any  one  ?  It 
is  the  way  most  gods  have  come  to  appear  among  men  : 
thus,  if  in  Pindar's  time  "  Neptune  was  seen  once  at 
the  Nemean  games,"  what  was  this  Neptune  too  but  a 
"  stranger  of  noble  grave  aspect  "—fit  to  be  "  seen  !  " 
There  is  something  pathetic,  tragic  for  me  in  this  last 
voice  of  paganism.  Thor  is  vanished,  the  whole  Norse 


48  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

world  has  vanished ;  and  will  not  return  ever  again. 
In  like  fashion  to  that  pass  away  the  highest  things. 
All  things  that  have  been  in  this  word,  all  things  that 
are  or  will  be  in  it,  have  to  vanish  :  we  have  our  sad 
farewell  to  give  them. 

That  Norse  religion,  a  rude  but  earnest,  sternly  im- 
pressive consecration  of  valor  (so  we  may  defie  it),  suf- 
ficed for  these  old  valiant  Northmen.  Consecration  of 
valor  is  not  a  'bad  thing  !  We  will  take  it  for  good,  so 
far  as  it  goes.  Neither  is  there  no  use  in  knowing 
something  about  this  old  paganism  of  our  fathers. 
Unconsciously  and  combined  with  higher  things,  it  is 
in  us  yet,  that  old  faith  withal!  To  know  it  con- 
sciously, brings  us  into  closer  and  clearer  relation  with 
the  past — with  our  own  possessions  in  the  past.  For 
the  whole  past,  as  I  keep  repeating,  is  the  possession 
of  the  present ;  the  past  had  always  something  true 
and  is  a  precious  possession.  In  a  different  time,  in  a 
different  place,  it  is  always  some  other  side  of  our  com- 
mon human  nature  that  has  been  developing  itself. 
The  actual  true  is  the  sum  of  all  these  ;  not  anyone  of 
them  by  itself  constitutes  what  of  human  nature  is 
hitherto  developed.  Better  to  know  them  all  than 
misknow  them.  "  To  which  of  these  three  religions 
do  you  specially  adhere  ? "  inquires  Meister  of  his 
teacher.  "  To  all  the  three  ! "  answers  the  other  : 
"  To  all  the  three ;  for  they  by  their  union  first  con- 
stitute the  true  religion." 


THE  HEHO  AS  PROPHET.  49 


LECTUBE  II.* 

THE   HERO   AS   PROPHET — MAHOMET — ISLAM. 

FROM  the  first  rude  times  of  paganism  among  the 
Scandinavians  in  the  north,  we  advance  to  a  very  dif- 
ferent epoch  of  religion,  among  a  very  different 
people  :  Mahometanism  among  the  Arabs.  A 
great  change ;  what  a  change  and  progress  is  in- 
dicated here,  in  the  universal  condition  and  thoughts 
of  men ! 

The  hero  is  now  regarded  as  a  god  among  his  fellow- 
men  ;  but  as  one  god-inspired,  as  a  prophet.  It  is  the 
second  phasis  of  hero-worship ;  the  first  or  oldest,  we 
may  say,  has  passed  away  without  return  ;  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  there  will  not  again  be  any  man, 
never  so  great,  whom  his  fellow-men  will  take  for  a 
god.  Nay  we  might  rationally  ask,  did  any  set  of 
human  beings  ever  really  think  the  man  they  saw  there 
standing  beside  them  a  god,  the  maker  of  this  world  ? 
Perhaps  not ;  it  was  usually  some  man  they  remem- 
bered, or  had  seen.  But  neither  can  this  any  more  be. 
The  great  man  is  not  recognized  henceforth  as  a  god 
any  more. 

It  was  a  rude  gross  error,  that  of  counting  the  great 
man  a  god.  Yet  let  us  say  that  it  is  at  all  times  dif- 
ficult to  know  what  he  is,  or  how  to  account  of  him 
and  receive  him  !  The  most  significant  feature  in  the 

*pelivered  Friday,  May  8,  1840, 


50  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

history  of  an  epoch  is  the  manner  it  has  of  welcoming 
a  great  man.  Ever,  to  the  true  instincts  of  men,  there 
is  something  godlike  in  him.  Whether  they  shall  take 
him  to  be  a  god,  to  be  a  prophet,  or  what  they  shall 
take  him  to  be  ?  that  is  ever  a  grand  question  ;  by  their 
way  of  answering  that,  we  shall  see^s  through  a  little 
window,  into  the  very  heart  of  these  men's  spiritual 
condition.  For  at  bottom  the  great  man,  as  he  comes 
from  the  hand  of  nature,  is  ever  the  same  kind  of 
thing  ;  Odin,  Luther,  Johnson,  Burns  ;  I  hope  to  make 
it  appear  that  these  are  all  originally  of  one  stuff  ;  that 
only  by  the  world's  reception  of  them,  and  the  shapes 
they  assume,  are  they  so  immeasurably  diverse.  The 
worship  of  Odin  astonishes  us — to  fall  prostrate  before 
the  great  man,  into  deliquium  of  love  and  wonder 
over  him,  and  feel  in  their  hearts  that  he  was  a  denizen 
of  the  skies,  a  god  !  This  was  imperfect  enough :  but 
to  welcome,  for  example,  a  Burns  as  we  did,  was  that 
what  we  can  call  perfect?  The  most  precious  gift  that 
heaven  can  give  to  the  earth  ;  a  man  of  "  genius  "  as 
we  call  it ;  the  soul  of  a  man  actually  sent  down  from 
the  skies  with  a  God's-message  to  us — this  we  waste 
away  as  an  idle  artificial  firework,  sent  to  amuse  us 
a  little,  and  sink  it  into  ashes,  wreck  and  in  effectuality: 
such  reception  of  a  great  man  I  do  not  call  very  perfect 
either  !  Looking  into  the  heart  of  the  thing,  one  may 
perhaps  call  that  of  Burns  a  still  uglier  phenomenon, 
betokening  still  sadder  imperfections  in  mankind's 
ways,  than  the  Scandinavian  method  itself  !  To  fall 
into  mere  unreasoning  deliquium  of  love  and  admira- 
tion, was  not  good  ;  but  such  unreasoning,  nay  irration- 
al supercilious  no-love  at  all  is  perhaps  still  worse! 
It  is  a  thing  forever  changing,  this  of  hero-worship : 
different  in  each  age,  difficult  to  dp  well  in  any  age. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  51 

Indeed,  the  heart  of  the  whole  business  of  the  age,  one 
may  say,  is  to  do  it  well. 

We  have  chosen  Mahomet  not  as  the  most  eminent 
prophet ;  but  as  the  one  we  are  freest  to  speak  of.  He 
is  by  no  means  the  truest  of  prophets ;  but  I  do  esteem 
him  a  true  one.  Farther,  as  there  is  no  danger  of  our 
becoming,  any  of  us,  Mahometans,  I  mean  to  say  all 
the  good  of  him  I  justly  can.  It  is  the  way  to  get  at 
his  secret :  let  us  try  to  understand  what  he  meant  with 
the  world  ;  what  the  world  meant  and  means  with  him, 
will  then  be  a  more  answerable  question.  Our  current 
hypothesis  about  Mahomet,  that  he  was  a  scheming  im- 
postor, a  falsehood  incarnate,  that  his  religion  is  a  mere 
mass  of  quackery  and  fatuity,  begins  really  to  be  now 
untenable  to  any  one.  The  lies,  which  well-meaning  zeal 
has  heaped  round  this  man,  are  disgraceful  to  ourselves 
only.  When  Pococke  inquired  of  Grotius,  where  the 
proof  was  of  that  story  of  the  pigeon,  trained  to  pick  peas 
from  Mahomet's  ear  and  pass  for  an  angel  dictating  to 
him  ?  Grotius  answered  that  there  was  no  proof !  It  is 
really  time  to  dismiss  all  that.  The  word  this  man  spoke 
has  been  the  life-guidance  now  of  a  hundred  and 
eighty  millions  of  men  these  twelve  hundred  years, 
These  hundred  and  eighty  millions  were  made  by  God 
as  well  as  we.  A  greater  number  of  God's  creatures 
believe  in  Mahomet's  word  at  this  hour  than  in  any 
other  word  whatever.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  it  was 
a  miserable  piece  of  spiritual  legerdemain,  this  which 
so  many  creatures  of  the  Almighty  have  lived  by  and 
died  by  ?  I,  for  my  part,  cannot  form  any  such  sup- 
position. I  will  believe  most  things  sooner  than  that. 
One  would  be  entirely  at  a  loss  what  to  think  of  this 
world  at  all,  if  quackery  so  grew  and  were  sanctignecl 
here. 


52  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

Alas,  such  theories  are  very  lamentable.  If  we 
would  attain  to  knowledge  of  anything  in  God's  true 
creation,  let  us  disbelieve  them  wholly  !  They  are  the 
product  of  an  age  of  skepticism  ;  they  indicate  the 
saddest  spiritual  paralysis  and  mere  death-life  of  the 
souls  of  men  :  more  godless  theory,  I  think,  was  never 
promulgated  in  this  earth.  A  false  man  found  a 
religion  ?  Why,  a  false  man  cannot  build  a  brick 
house !  If  he  do  not  know  and  follow  truly  the  prop- 
erties of  mortar,  burned  clay  and  what  else  he  works  in, 
it  is  no  house  that  he  makes,  but  a  rubbish  heap.  It 
will  not  stand  for  twelve  centuries,  to  lodge  a  hundred 
and  eighty  millions ;  it  will  fall  straightway.  A  man 
must*  conform  himself  to  nature's  laws,  be  verily  in 
communion  with  nature  and  the  truth  of  things,  or 
nature  will  answer  him,  No,  not  at  all !  Speciosities 
are  specious — ah  me  !  A  Cagliostro,  many  Cagliostros, 
prominent  world-leaders,  do  prosper  by  their  quackery, 
for  a  day.  It  is  like  a  forged  bank-note  ;  they  get  it 
passed  out  of  their  worthless  hands :  others,  not  they, 
have  to  smart  for  it.  Nature  bursts  up  in  fire-flames, 
French  revolutions  and  such-like,  proclaiming  with 
terrible  veracity  that  forged  notes  are  forged. 

But  of  a  great  man  especially,  of  him  I  will  venture 
to  assert  that  it  is  incredible  he  should  have  been  other 
than  true.  It  seems  to  me  the  primary  foundation  of 
him  and  of  all  that  can  lie  in  him,  this.  No  Mirabeau, 
Napoleon,  Burns,  Cromwell,  no  man  adequate  to  do 
anything,  but  is  first  of  all  in  right  earnest  about  it ; 
what  I  call  a  sincere  man.  I  should  say  sincerity,  a 
deep,  great,  genuine  sincerity,  is  the  first  characteristic 
of  all  men  in  any  way  heroic.  Not  the  sincerity  that 
calls  itself  sincere  ;  ah  no,  that  is  a  very  poor  matter 
indeed — a  shallow  braggart  conscious  sincerity  ;  often/* 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  53 

est  self-conceit  mainly.  The  great  man's  sincerity  is 
of  the  kind  he  cannot  speak  of,  is  not  conscious  of  : 
nay,  I  suppose,  he  is  conscious  rather  of  ^sincerity  ; 
for  what  man  can  walk  accurately  by  the  law  of  truth 
for  one  day  '*  No,  the  great  man  does  not  boast  him- 
self sincere,  far  from  that ;  perhaps  does  not  ask  him- 
self if  he  is  so  :  I  would  say  rather,  his  sincerity  does 
not  depend  on  himself ;  he  cannot  help  being  sincere  ! 
The  great  fact  of  existence  is  great  to  him.  Fly  as  he 
will,  he  cannot  get  out  of  the  awful  presence  of  this 
reality.  His  mind  is  so  made ;  he  is  great  by  that, 
first  of  all.  Fearful  and  wonderful,  real  as  life,  real  as 
death,  is  this  universe  to  him.  Though  all  men  should 
forget  its  truth  and  walk  in  a  vain  show,  he  cannot. 
At  all  moments  the  flame-image  glares  in  upon  him  ; 
undeniable,  there,  there  !  I  wish  you  to  take  this  as 
my  primary  definition  of  a  great  man.  A  little  man 
may  have  this,  it  is  competent  to  all  men  that  God  has 
made  :  but  a  great  man  cannot  be  without  it. 

Such  a  man  is  what  we  call  an  original  man  ;  he 
comes  to  us  at  first  hand.  A  messenger  he,  sent -from 
the  infinite  unknown  with  tidings  to  us.  We  may  call 
him  poet,  prophet,  god — in  one  way  or  other,  we  all 
feel  that  the  words  he  utters  are  as  no  other  man's 
words.  Direct  from  the  inner  fact  of  things — he  lives, 
and  has  to  live,  in  daily  communion  with  that.  Hear- 
says cannot  hide  it  from  him  ;  he  is  blind,  homeless, 
1  Miserable,  following  hearsays;  ^glares  in  upon  him. 
Really  his  utterances,  are  they  not  a  kind  of  "reve- 
lation"— what  we  must  call  such  for  want  of  some 
other  name  ?  It  is  from  the  heart  of  the  world  that 
he  comes  ;  he  is  portion  of  the  primal  reality  of  things. 
God  has  made  many  revelations:  but  this  man  too, 
has  not  God  made  him,  the  latest  and  newest  of  all? 


54  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

The   "  inspiration  of  the  Almighty  giveth  him  under- 
standing : "  we  must  listen  before  all  to  him. 

This  Mahomet,  then,  we  will  in  no  wise  consider  as 
an  inanity  and  theatricality,  a  poor  conscious  ambitious 
schemer ;  we  cannot  conceive  him  so.  The  rude  mes- 
sage he  delivered  was  a  real  one  withal ;  an  earnest 
confused  voice  from  the  unknown  deep.  The  man's 
words  were  not  false,  nor  his  workings  here  below;  no 
inanity  and  simulacrum  ;  a  fiery  mass  of  life  cast-up 
from  the  great  bosom  of  nature  herself.  To  kindle  the 
world  ;  the  world's  Maker  had  ordered  it  so.  Neither 
can  the  faults,  imperfections,  insincerities  even,  or  Ma- 
homet, if  such  were  never  so  well  proved  against  him, 
shake  this  primary  fact  about  him. 

On  the  whole,  we  make  too  much  of  faults ;  the  de- 
tails of  the  business  hide  the  real  center  of  it.  Faults  ? 
The  greatest  of  faults,  I  should  say,  is  to  be  conscious 
of  none.  Headers  of  the  Bible  above  all,  one  would 
think,  might  know  better.  Who  is  called  there  "  the 
man  according  to  God's  own  heart?"  David,  the 
Hebrew  king,  had  fallen  into  sins  enough ;  blackest 
crimes  ;  there  was  no  want  of  sins.  And  thereupon 
the  unbelievers  sneer  and  ask,  "  Is  this  your  man  ac- 
cording to  God's  heart  ? "  The.sneer  I  must  say,  seems 
to  me  but  a  shallow  one.  "What  are  faults,  what  are 
the  outward  details  of  a  life ;  if  the  inner  secret  of  it, , 
the  remorse,  temptations,  true,  often-baffled,  never- 
ended  struggle  of  it,  be  forgotten  ?  "  It  is  not  in  man 
that  walketh  to  direct  his  steps."  Of  all  acts,  is  not, 
for  a  man,  repentance  the  most  divine  ?  The  deadliest 
sin,  I  say,  were  that  same  supercilious  consciousness  of 
no  sin— that  is  death;  the  heart  so  conscious  is  di- 
vorced from  sincerity,  humility  and  fact ;  is  dead :  it 
is  "pure"  as  dead  dry  sand  is  pure.  David's  life  ancj 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  55 

history,  as  written  for  us  in  those  psalms  of  his,  I  con- 
sider to  be  the  truest  emblem  ever  given  of  a  man's 
moral  progress  and  warfare  here  below.  All  earnest 
souls  will  ever  discern  in  it  the  faithful  struggle  of  an 
earnest  human  soul  toward  what  is  good  and  best. 
Struggle  often  baffled,  sore  baffled,  down  as  into  entire 
wreck ;  yet  a  struggle  never  ended  ;  ever,  with  tears, 
repentance,  true  unconquerable  purpose,  begun  anew. 
Poor  human  nature  !  Is  not  a  man's  walking,  in  truth, 
always  that :  "  a  succession  of  falls  ?"  Man  can  do  no 
other.  In  this  wild  element  of  a  life,  he  has  to  strug- 
gle onward ;  now  fallen,  deep-abased ;  and  ever,  with 
tears,  repentance,  with  bleeding  heart,  he  has  to  rise 
again,  struggle  again  still  onward.  That  his  struggle 
be  a  faithful  unconquerable  one ;  that  is  the  question 
of  questions.  We  will  put  up  with  many  sad  details, 
if  the  soul  of  it  were  true.  Details  by  themselves  will 
never  teach  us  what  it  is.  I  believe  we  misestimate 
Mahomet's  faults  even  as  faults  ;  but  the  secret  of  him 
will  never  be  got  by  dwelling  there.  We  will  leave 
all  this  behind  us  ;  and  assuring  ourselves  that  he  did 
mean  some  true  thing,  ask  candidly  what  it  was  or 
might  be. 

These  Arabs  Mahomet  was  born  among  are  certainly 
a  notable  people.  Their  country  itself  is  notable ;  the 
fit  habitation  for  such  a  race.  Savage  inaccessible 
rock-mountains,  great  grim  deserts,  alternating  with 
beautiful  strips  of  vendure :  wherever  water  is,  there 
is  greenness,  beauty ;  odoriferous  balm-shrubs,  date- 
trees,  frankincense-trees.  Consider  that  wide  waste 
horizon  of  sand,  empty,  silent,  like  a  sand-sea,  dividing 
habitable  place  from  habitable.  You  are  all  alone 
there,  left  alone  with  the  universe ;  by  day  a  fierce  sun 


56  LECTURES  ON  IIEROUS. 

blazing  down  on  it  with  intolerable  radiance  ;  by  night 
the  great  deep  heaven  with  its  stars.  Such  a  country 
is  fit  for  a  swift-handed,  deep  hearted  race  of  men. 
There  is  something  most  agile,  active,  and  yet  most 
meditative,  enthusiastic  in  the  Arab  character.  The 
Persians  are  called  the  French  of  the  East ;  we  will  call 
the  Arabs  Oriental  Italians.  A  gifted  noble  people ; 
a  people  of  wild  strong  feelings,  and  of  iron  restraint 
over  these :  the  characteristic  of  noblemindedness,  of 
genius.  The  wild  Bedouin  welcomes  the  stranger  to 
his  tent,  as  one  having  right  to  all  that  is  there  ;  were 
it  his  worst  enemy,  he  will  slay  his  foal  to  treat  him, 
will  serve  him  with  sacred  hospitality  for  three  days, 
will  set  him  fairly  on  his  way — and  then,  by  another 
law  as  sacred,  kill  him  if  he  can.  In  words  too,  as  in 
action.  They  are  not  a  loquacious  people,  taciturn 
rather  ;  but  eloquent,  gifted  when  they  do  speak.  An 
earnest,  truthful  kind  of  men.  They  are,  as  we  know, 
of  Jewish  kindred  ;  but  with  that  deadly  terrible  earn- 
estness of  the  Jews  they  seem  to  combine  something 
graceful,  brilliant,  which  is  not  Jewish.  They  had 
"  poetic  contests  "  among  them  before  the  time  of  Ma- 
homet. Sale  says,  at  Ocadh,  in  the  south  of  Arabia, 
there  were  yearly  fairs,  and  there,  when  the  merchan- 
dising was  done,  poets  sang  for  prizes — the  wild  people 
gathered  to  hear  that. 

One  Jewish  quality  these  Arabs  manifest ;  the  out- 
come of  many  or  of  all  high  qualities  :  what  we  may 
call  religiosity.  From  of  old  they  had  been  zealous 
worshipers,  according  to  their  light.  They  worshiped 
the  stars,  as  Sabeans;  worshiped  many  natural  objects 
—recognized  them  as  symbols,  immediate  manifesta- 
tions, of  the  Maker  of  nature.  It  was  wrong ;  and  yet 
not  wholly  wrong.  All  God's  works  are  still  in  ;i 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  57 

sense  symbols  of  God.  Do  we  not,  as  I  urged,  still 
account  it  a  merit  to  recognize  a  certain  inexhaustible 
significance,  "  poetic  beauty "  as  we  name  it,  in  all 
natural  objects  whatsoever  ?  A  man  is  a  poet  and 
honored,  for  doing  that  and  speaking  or  singing  it — a 
kind  of  diluted  worship.  They  had  many  prophets, 
these  Arabs  ;  teachers  each  to  his  tribe,  each  according 
to  the  light  he  had.  But  indeed,  have  we  not  from  of 
old  the  noblest  of  proofs,  still  palpable  to  every  one  of 
us,  of  what  devoutness  and  noblemindedness  had  dwelt 
in  these  rustic  thoughtful  peoples?  Biblical  critics 
seem  agreed  that  our  own  "  Book  of  Job  "  was  written 
in  that  region  of  the  world.  I  call  that,  apart  from 
all  theories  about  it,  one  of  the  grandest  things  ever 
written  with  pen.  One  feels,  indeed,  as  if  it  were  not 
Hebrew  ;  such  a  noble  universality,  different  from 
noble  patriotism  or  sectarianism,  reigns  in  it.  A  noble 
book ;  all  men's  book  !  It  is  our  first,  oldest  statement 
of  the  never-ending  problem — man's  destiny  and  God's 
ways  with  him  here  in  this  earth.  And  all  in  such 
free  flowing  outlines  ;  grand  in  its  sincerity,  in  its 
simplicity  ;  in  its  epic  melody  and  repose  of  reconcile- 
ment. There  is  the  seeing  eye,  the  mildly  understand- 
ing heart.  So  true  everyway  ;  true  eyesight  and  vision 
for  all  things  ;  material  things  no  less  than  spiritual : 
the  horse — "  hast  thou  clothed  his  neck  with  thunder  f  " 
He  "  laughs  at  the  shaking  of  the  spear !  "  Such  living 
likenesses  were  never  since  drawn.  Sublime  sorrow, 
sublime  reconciliation;  oldest  choral  melody  as  of  the 
heart  of  mankind — so  soft  and  great ;  as  the  summer 
midnight,  as  the  world  with  its  seas  and  stars !  There 
is  nothing  written,  I  think,  in  the  Bible  or  out  of  it,  of 
equal  literary  merit. 
To  the  idolatrous  Arabs  one  of  the  most  ancient 


58  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

universal  objects  of  worship  was  that  black  stone,  still 
kept  in  the  building  called  Caabah  at  Mecca.  Diodorus 
Siculus  mentions  this  Caabah  in  a  way  not  to  be  mis- 
taken, as  the  oldest,  most  honored  temple  in  his  time; 
that  is,  some  half  century  before  our  era.  Silvestre  de 
Sarv  says  there  is  some  likelihood  that  the  black  stone 
is  an  aerolite.  In  that  case,  some  man  might  see  it  fall 
out  of  heaven  !  It  stands  now  beside  the  well  Zem- 
zem  ;  the  Caabah  is  built  over  both.  A  well  is  in  all 
places  a  beautiful  affecting  object,  gushing  out  like  life 
from  the  hard  earth — still  more  so  in  those  hot  dry 
countries,  where  it  is  the  first  condition  of  being.  The 
well  Zemzem  has  its  name  from  the  bubling  sound  of 
the  waters,  zem-zem  ;  they  think  it  is  the  well  which 
Hagar  found  with  her  little  Ishmael  in  the  wilderness : 
the  aerolite  and  it  have  been  sacred  now  and  had  a 
Caabah  over  them,  for  thousands  of  years.  A  curious 
object,  that  Caabah !  There  it  stands  at  this  hour,  in 
the  black  cloth-covering  the  Sultan  sends  it  yearly ; 
"  twenty  seven  cubits  high  ;"  with  circuit,  with  double 
circuit  of  pillars,  with  festoon-rows  of  lamps  and  quaint 
ornaments :  the  lamps  will  be  lighted  again  this  night 
—to  glitter  again  under  the  stars.  An  authentic  frag- 
ment of  the  oldest  past.  It  is  the  keblah  of  all  Moslem  : 
from  Delhi  all  onward  to  Morocco,  the  eyes  of  innum- 
erable praying  men  are  turned  toward  it,  five  times, 
this  day  and  all  days :  one  of  the  notablest  centers  in 
the  habitation  of  men. 

It  had  been  from  the  sacredness  attached  to  this 
Caabah  stone  and  Hagar's  well,  from  the  pilgrimings 
of  all  tribes  of  Arabs  thither,  that  Mecca  took  its  rise 
as  a  town.  A  great  town  once,  though  much  decayed 
now.  It  has  no  natural  advantage  for  a  town  ;  stands 
in  a  sandy  hollow  amid  bare  barren  hills,  at  a  distance 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  59 

from  the  sea ;  its  provisions,  its  very  bread,  have  to  be 
imported.  But  so  many  pilgrims  needed  lodgings : 
and  then  all  places  of  pilgrimage  do,  from  the  first,  be- 
come places  of  trade.  The  first  day  pilgrims  meet, 
merchants  have  also  met :  where  men  see  themselves 
assembled  for  one  object,  they  find  that  they  can  ac- 
complish other  objects  which  depend  on  meeting  to- 
gether. Mec.ca  became  the  fair  of  all  Arabia.  And 
thereby  indeed  the  chief  staple  and  warehouse  of 
whatever  commerce  there  was  between  the  Indian  and 
the  western  countries,  Syria,  Egypt,  even  Italy.  It 
had  at  one  time  a  population  of  100,000  ;  buyers,  for- 
warders of  those  eastern  and  western  products;  im- 
porters for  their  own  behoof  of  provisions  and  corn. 
The  government  was  a  kind  of  irregular  aristocratic 
republic,  not  without  a  touch  of  theocracy.  Ten  men 
of  a  chief  tribe,  chosen  in  some  rough  way,  were  gov- 
ernors of  Mecca,  and  keepers  of  the  Caabah.  The 
Koreish  were  the  chief  tribe  in  Mahomet's  time ; 
his  own  family  was  of  that  tribe.  The  rest  of  the 
nation,  fractioned  and  cut-asunder  by  deserts,  lived 
under  similar  rude  patriarchal  governments  by  one  or 
several:  herdsmen,  carriers,  traders,  generally  robbers 
too ;  being  oftenest  at  war  one  with  another,  or  with 
all :  held  together  by  no  open  bond,  if  it  were  not  this 
meeting  at  the  Caabah,  where  all  forms  of  Arab  idol- 
atry assembled  in  common  adoration — held  mainly  by 
the  inward  indissoluble  bond  of  common  blood  and  lan- 
guage. In  this  way  had  the  Arabs  lived  for  long  ages, 
unnoticed  by  the  world ;  a  people  of  great  qualities, 
unconsciously  waiting  for  the  day  when  they  should 
become  notable  to  all  the  world.  Their  idolatries  ap- 
pear to  have  been  in  a  tottering  state  ;  much  was  get- 
ting into  confusion  and  fermentation  among  them. 


60  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

Obscure  tidings  of  the  most  important  event  ever  trans- 
acted in  this  world,  the  life  and  death  of  the  Divine 
Man  in  Judea,  at  once  the  symptom  and  cause  of  im- 
measurable change  to  all  people  in  the  world,  had 
in  the  course  of  centuries  reached  into  Arabia  too  ; 
and  could  not  but,  of  itself,  have  produced  fermentation 
there. 

It  was  among  this  Arab  people,  so  circumstanced,  in 
the  year  570  of  our  era,  that  the  man  Mahomet  was 
born.  He  was  of  the  family  of  Hashem,  of  the  Kore- 
ish  tribe  as  we  said ;  though  poor,  connected  with  the 
chief  persons  of  his  country.  Almost  at  his  birth  he 
lost  his  father ;  at  the  age  of  six  years  his  mother  too, 
a  woman  noted  for  her  beauty,  her  worth  and  sense  : 
he  fell  to  the  charge  of  his  grandfather,  an  old  man,  a 
hundred  years  old.  A  good  old  man :  Mahomet's 
father,  Abdallah,  had  been  his  youngest  favorite  son. 
He  saw  in  Mahomet,  with  his  old  life-worn  eyes,  a 
century  old,  the  lost  Abdallah  come  back  again,  all 
that  was  left  of  Abdallah.  He  loved  the  little  orphan 
boy  greatly  ;  used  to  say,  "they  must  take  care  of  that 
beautiful  little  boy,  nothing  in  their  kindred  was  more 
precious  than  he."  At  his  death,  while  the  boy  was 
still  but  two  years  old,  he  left  him  in  charge  to  Abu 
Thaleb  the  eldest  of  the  uncles,  as  to  him  that  now 
was  head  of  the  house.  By  this  uncle,  a  just  and 
rational  man  as  everything  betokens,  Mahomet  was 
brought  up  in  the  best  Arab  way. 

Mahomet,  as  he  grew  up,  accompanied  his  uncle  on 
trading  journeys  and  suchlike;  in  his  eighteenth  year 
one  finds  him  a  fighter  following  his  uncle  in  war. 
But  perhaps  the  most  significant  of  all  his  journe}Ts  is 
one  we  find  noted  as  of  some  years'  earlier  date;  a 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  61 

journey  to  the  fairs  of  Syria.  The  young  man  here 
first  came  in  contact  with  a  quite  foreign  world — with 
one  foreign  element  of  endless  moment  to  him :  the 
Christian  religion.  I  know  not  what  to  make  of  that 
"Sergius,  the  Nestorian  monk,"  whom  Abu  Thaleb 
and  he  are  said  to  have  lodged  with  ;  or  how  much 
any  monk  could  have  taught  one  still  so  young.  Prob- 
ably enough  it  is  greatly  exaggerated,  this  of  the  ~Nes- 
torian  monk.  Mahomet  was  only  fourteen ;  had  no 
language  but  his  own  :  much  in  Syria  must  have  been 
a  strange  unintelligible  whirlpool  to  him.  But  the 
eyes  of  the  lad  were  open ;  glimpses  of  many  things 
would  doubtless  be  taken  in,  and  lie  very  enigmatic  as 
yet,  which  were  to  ripen  in  a  strange  way  into  views, 
into  beliefs  and  insights  one  day.  These  journeys  to 
Syria  were  probably  the  beginning  of  much  to  Ma- 
homet. 

One  other  circumstance  we  must  not  forget :  that  he 
had  no  school-learning ;  of  the  thing  we  call  school- 
learning  none  at  all.  The  art  of  writing  was  but  just 
introduced  into  Arabia  ;  it  seems  to  be  the  true  opinion 
that  Mahomet  never  could  write  !  Life  in  the  desert, 
with  its  experiences,  was  all  his  education.  What  of 
this  infinite  universe  he,  from  his  dim  place,  with  his 
own  eyes  and  thoughts,  could  take  in,  so  much  and  no 
more  of  it  was  he  to  know.  Curious,  if  we  will  reflect 
on  it,  this  of  having  no  books.  Except  by  what  he 
could  see  for  himself,  or  hear  of  by  uncertain  rumor 
of  speech  in  the  obscure  Arabian  desert,  he  could  know 
nothing.  The  wisdom  that  had  been  before  him  or  at 
a  distance  from  him  in  the  world,  was  in  a  manner  as 
good  as  not  there  for  him.  Of  the  great  brother  souls, 
flame  beacons  through  so  many  lands  and  times,  no  one 
directly  communicates  with  this  great  soul.  He  is 


02  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

alone  there,  deep  down  in  the  bosom  of  the  wilderness ; 
has  to  grow  up  so — alone  with  nature  and  his  own 
thoughts. 

But,  from  an  early  age,  he  had  been  remarked  as  a 
thoughtful  man.  His  companions  named  him  "  Al 
Amin,  the  faithful."  A  man  of  truth  and  fidelity; 
true  in  what  he  did,  in  what  he  spoke  and  thought. 
They  noted  that  he  always  meant  something.  A  man 
rather  taciturn  in  speech ;  silent  when  there  was 
nothing  to  be  said  ;  but  pertinent,  wise,  sincere,  when 
he  did  speak ;  always  throwing  light  on  the  matter. 
This  is  the  only  sort  of  speech  worth  speaking !  Through 
life  we  find  him  to  have  been  regarded  as  an  altogether 
solid,  brotherly,  genuine  man.  A  serious,  sincere 
character  ;  yet  amiable,  cordial,  companionable,  jocose 
even — a  good  laugh  in  him  withal  :  there  are  men 
whose  laugh  is  as  untrue  as  anything  about  them  ;  who 
cannot  laugh.  One  hears  of  Mahomet's  beauty  :  his 
fine  sagacious  honest  face,  brown  florid  complexion, 
beaming  black  eyes — I  somehow  like  too  that  vein  on 
the  brow,  which  swelled  up  black  when  he  was  in 
anger :  like  the  "  horse-shoe  vein  "  in  Scott's  red  gaunt- 
let. It  was  a  kind  of  feature  in  the  Hashem  family, 
this  black  swelling  vein  in  the  brow  ;  Mahomet  had  it 
prominent,  as  would  appear.  A  spontaneous,  passion- 
ate, yet  just,  true-meaning  man !  Full  of  wild  faculty, 
fire  and  light ;  of  wild  worth,  all  uncultured  ;  working 
out  his  life-task  in  the  depths  of  the  desert  there. 

How  he  was  placed  with  Kadijah,  a  rich  widow,  as 
her  steward  and  traveled  in  hsr  business,  again  to  the 
fairs  of  Syria ;  how  he  managed  all,  as  one  can  well 
understand,  with  fidelity,  adroitness ;  how  her  grati- 
tude, her  regard  for  him  grew  :  the  story  of  their  mar- 
riage is  altogether  a  graceful  intelligible  one,  as  told  us 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  63 

by  the  Arab  authors.  He  was  twenty-five  ;  she  forty, 
though  still  beautiful.  He  seems  to  have  lived  in  a 
most  affectionate,  peaceable,  wholesome  way  with  this 
wedded  benefactress  ;  loving  her  truly  and  her  alone. 
It  goes  greatly  against  the  impostor  theory,  the  fact 
that  he  lived  in  this  entirely  unexceptional,  entirely 
quiet  and  commonplace  way,  till  the  heat  of  his  years 
was  done.  He  was  forty  before  he  talked  of  any  mis- 
sion from  heaven.  All  his  irregularities,  real  and  sup- 
posed date  from  after  his  fiftieth  year,  when  the  good 
Kadijah  died.  All  his  "ambition,"  seemingly,  had 
been,  hitherto,  to  live  an  honest  life  ;  his  "  fame,"  the 
mere  good  opinion  of  neighbors  that  knew  him,  had 
been  sufficient  hitherto.  Not  till  he  was  already  get- 
ting old,  the  prurient  heat  of  his  life  all  burned  out  and 
peace  growing  to  be  the  chief  thing  this  world  could 
give  him,  did  he  start  on  the  u  career  of  ambition ; " 
and,  belying  all  his  past  character  and  existence,  set  up 
as  a  wretched  empty  charlatan  to  acquire  what  he 
could  now  no  longer  enjoy !  For  my  share,  I  have  no 
faith  whatever  in  that. 

Ah  no :  this  deep-hearted  son  of  the  wilderness,  with 
his  beaming  black  eyes  and  open  social  deep  soul,  had 
other  thoughts  in  him  than  ambition.  A  silent  great 
soul ;  he  was  one  of  those  who  cannot  lut  be  in  earnest ; 
whom  nature  herself  has  appointed  to  be  sincere. 
While  others  walk  in  formulas  and  hearsays,  contented 
enough  to  dwell  there,  this  man  could  not  screen  him- 
self in  formulas ;  he  was  alone  with  his  own  soul  and 
the  reality  of  things.  The  great  mystery  of  existence, 
as  I  said,  glared  in  upon  him,  with  its  terrors,  with  its 
splendors;  no  hearsays  could  hide  that  unspeakable 
fact,  "  Here  am  I !  "  Such  sincerity,  as  we  named  it, 
has  in  very  truth  something  of  divine.  The  word  of 


64  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

such  a  man  is  a  voice  direct  from  nature's  own  heart. 
Men  do  and  must  listen  to  that  as  to  nothing  else — all 
else  is  wind  in  comparison.  From  of  old,  a  thousand 
thoughts,  in  his  pilgrimings  and  wanderings,  had  been 
in  this  man :  What  am  I  ?  What  is  this  unfathomable 
thing  I  live  in,  which  men  name  universe  ?  What  is 
life ;  what  is  death  ?  What  am  I  to  believe  ?  What 
am  I  to  do  ?  The  grim  rocks  of  Mount  Hara,  of 
Mount  Sinai,  the  stern  sandy  solitudes  answered  not. 
The  great  heaven  rolling  silent  overhead,  with  its  blue- 
glancing  stars,  answered  not.  There  was  no  answer. 
The  man's  own  soul  and  what  of  God's  inspiration 
dwelled  there,  had  to  answer ! 

It  is  the  thing  which  all  men  have  to  ask  themselves  ; 
which  we  too  have  to  ask  and  answer.  This  wild  man 
felt  it  to  be  of  infinite  moment ;  all  other  things  of  no 
moment  whatever  in  comparison.  The  jargon  of  argu- 
mentative Greek  sects,  vague  traditions  of  Jews,  the 
stupid  routine  of  Arab  idolatry :  there  was  no  answer 
in  these.  A  hero,  as  I  repeat,  has  this  first  distinction, 
which  indeed  we  may  call  first  and  last,  the  alpha  and 
and  omega  of  his  whole  heroism,  that  he  looks  through 
the  shows  of  things  into  things.  Use  and  wont,  re- 
spectable hearsay,  respectable  formula :  all  these  are 
good,  or  are  not  good.  There  is  something  behind  and 
beyond  all  these,  which  all  these  must  correspond  with, 
be  the  image  of,  or  they  are — idolatries ;  "  bits  of 
black  wood  pretending  to  be  God;"  to  the  earnest 
soul  a  mockery  and  abomination.  Idolatries  never  so 
gilded,  waited  on  by  heads  of  the  Koreish,  will  do 
nothing  for  this  man.  Though  all  men  walk  by  them, 
what  good  is  it  ?  The  great  reality  stands  glaring 
there  upon  him.  He  there  has  to  answer  it,  or  perish 
miserably.  Now,  even  now,  or  else  though  all  eternity 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  65 

never  !  Answer  it;  ihou  must  find  an  answer — ambi- 
tion ?  What  could  all  Arabia  do  for  this  man  ;  with 
the  crown  of  Greek  Heraclius,  of  Persian  Chosroes,  and 
all  crowns  in  the  earth — what  could  they  all  do  for 
him  ?  It  was  not  of  the  earth  he  wanted  to  hear  tell ; 
it  was  of  the  heaven  above  and  the  hell  beneath.  All 
crowns  and  sovereignties  whatsoever,  where  would  they 
in  a  few  brief  years  be?  To  be  sheik  of  Mecca  or 
Arabia,  and  have  a  bit  of  gilt  wood  put  into  your  hand 
— will  that  be  one's  salvation  ?  I  decidedly  think  not. 
"We  will  leave  it  altogether,  this  impostor  hypothesis, 
as  not  credible ;  not  very  tolerable  even,  worthy  chiefly 
of  dismissal  by  us. 

Mahomet  had  not  been  wont  to  retire  yearly,  during 
the  month  Ramadhan,  into  solitude  and  silence ;  as 
indeed  was  the  Arab  custom;  a  praiseworthy  custom, 
which  such  a  man,  above  all,  would  find  natural  and 
useful.  Communing  with  his  own  heart,  in  the  silence 
of  the  mountains  ;  himself  silent ;  open  to  the  "  small 
still  voices :  "  it  was  a  right  natural  custom !  Mahomet 
was  in  his  fortieth  year,  when  having  withdrawn  to  a 
cavern  in  Mount  Hara,  near  Mecca,  during  this  Eamad- 
han,  to  pass  the  month  in  prayer,  and  meditation  on 
those  great  questions,  he  one  day  told  his  wife  Kadijah, 
who  with  his  household  was  with  him  or  near  him  this 
year,  That  by  the  unspeakable  special  favor  of  heav- 
en he  had  now  found  it  all  oufr;  was  in  doubt  and 
darkness  no  longer,  but  saw  it  all.  That  all  these  idols 
and  formulas  were  nothing,  miserable  bits  of  wood  ; 
that  there  was  one  God  in  and  over  all ;  and  we  must 
leave  all  idols,  and  look  to  Him.  That  God  is  great ; 
and  that  there  is  nothing  else  great !  He  is  the  reality. 
Wooden  idols  are  not  real ;  He  is  real.  He  made  us 
at  first,  sustains  us  yet ;  we  and  all  things  are  but  the 


66  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

shadow  of  Him  ;  a  transitory  garment  veiling  the 
eternal  splendor.  "Allah  akbar,  God  is  great " — and 
then  also  "Islam"  that  we  must  submit  to  God.  That 
our  whole  strength  lies  in  resigned  submission  to  Him, 
whatsoever  He  do  to  us.  For  this  world,  and  for  the 
other !  The  things  he  sends  to  us,  were  it  death  and 
worse  than  death,  shall  be  good,  shall  be  best ;  we  re- 
sign ourselves  to  God.  "If  this  be  Islam,"  says 
Goethe,  "  do  we  not  all  live  in  Islam  f  "  Yes,  all  of  us 
that  have  any  moral  life ;  we  all  live  so.  It  has  ever 
been  held  the  highest  wisdom  for  a  man  not  merely  to 
submit  to  necessity — necessity  will  make  him  submit — 
but  to  know  and  believe  well  that  the  stern  thing 
which  necessity  had  ordered  was  the  wisest,  the  best, 
the  thing  wanted  there.  To  cease  his  frantic  preten- 
sion of  scanning  .this  great  God's-world  in  his  small 
fraction  of  a  brain  ;  to  know  that  it  had  verily,  though 
deep  beyond  his  soundings,  a  just  law,  that  the 
soul  of  it  was  good — that  his  part  in  it  was  to  con- 
form to  the  law  of  the  whole,  and  in  devout  silence 
follow  that ;  not  questioning  it,  obeying  it  as  unques- 
tionable. 

I  say,  this  is  yet  the  only  true  morality  known.  A 
man  is  right  and  invincible,  virtuous  and  on  the  road 
toward  sure  conquest,  precisely  while  he  joins  himself 
to  the  great  deep  law  of  the  world,  in  spite  of  all 
superficial  laws,  temporary  appearances,  profit-and-loss 
calculations  ;  he  is  victorious  while  he  co-operates  with 
that  great  central  law,  not  victorious  otherwise — and 
surely  his  first  chance  of  co-operating  with  'it,  or  get- 
ting into  the  course  of  it,  is  to  know  Avith  his  whole 
soul  that  it  is  ;  that  it  is  good,  and  alone  good  !  This 
is  the  soul  of  Islam ;  it  is  properly  the  soul  of  Chris- 
tianity— for  Islam  is  definable  as  a  confused  form  of 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  67 

Christianity  ;  had  Christianity  not  been,  neither  had 
it  been.  Christianity  also  commands  us,  before  all,  to 
be  resigned  to  God.  "We  are  to  take  no  counsel  with 
flesh-and-blood ;  give  ear  to  no  vain  cavils,  vain  sorrows 
and  wishes  :  to  know  that  we  know  nothing  ;  that  the 
worst  and  cruelest  to  our  eyes  is  not  what  it  seems;  that 
we  have  to  receive  whatsoever  befalls  us  as  sent  from  God 
above,  and  say,  it  is  good  and  wise,  God  is  great ! 
"  Though  He  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in  Him,"  Islam 
means  in  its  way  denial  of  self,  annihilation  of  self. 
This  is  yet  the  highest  wisdom  that  heaven  has  re- 
vealed to  our  earth. 

Such  light  has  come,  as  it  could,  to  illuminate  the 
darkness  of  this  wild  Arab  soul.  A  confused  dazzling 
splendor  as  of  life  and  heaven,  in  the  great  darkness 
which  threatened  to  be  death :  he  called  it  revelation 
and  the  angel  Gabriel — who  of  us  yet  can  know  what 
to  call  it  ?  It  is  the  "  inspiration  of  the  Almighty  that 
giveth  us  understanding."  To  know ;  to  get  into  the 
truth  of  anything,  is  ever  a  mystic  act — of  which  the 
best  logics  can  but  babble  on  the  surface.  "  Is  not  be- 
lief the  true  god-announcing  miracle  ?  "  says  Novalis. 
That  Mahomet's  whole  soul,  set  in  flame  with  this 
grand  truth  vouchsafed  him,  should  feel  as  if  it  were 
important  and  the  only  important  thing,  was  very 
natural.  That  Providence  had  unspeakably  honored 
him  by  revealing  it,  saving  him  from  death  and  dark- 
ness ;  that  he  therefore  was  bound  to  make  known  the 
same  to  all  creatures :  -his  is  what  was  meant  by 
"  Mahomet  is  the  prophet  of  God ; "  this  too  is  not 
without  its  true  meaning. 

The  good  Kadijah,  we  can  fancy,  listened  to  him 
with  wonder,  with  doubt ;  at  length  she  answered  : 
"  Yes,  it  was  true  this  that  he  said."  One  can  fancy 


68  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

too  the  boundless  gratitude  of  Mahomet ;  and  how  of 
all  the  kindnesses  she  had  done  him,  this  of  believing 
the  earnest  struggling  word  he  now  spoke  was  the 
greatest.  "  It  is  certain,"  says  Novalis,  "  my  conviction 
gains  infiniteljT,  the  moment  another  soul  will  believe 
in  it."  It  is  boundless  favor.  He  never  forgot  this 
good  Kadijah.  Long  afterward,  Ayesha  his  3roung 
favorite  wife,  a  woman  who  indeed  distinguished  her- 
self among  the  Moslem,  by  all  manner  of  qualities, 
through  her  whole  long  life ;  this  young  brilliant 
Ayesha  was,  one  day,  questioning  him  :  "  Now  am  not  I 
better  than  Kadijah  ?  She  was  a  widow  ;  old  and  had 
lost  her  looks  :  you  love  me  better  than  you  did  her  ?" 
"  No,  by  Allah  !  "  answered  Mahomet :  "  No,  by  Allah ! 
She  believed  in  me  when  none  else  would  believe.  In 
the  whole  world  I  had  but  one  friend  and  she  was 
that ! "  Seid,  his  slave,  also  believed  in  him ;  these 
with  his  young  cousin  Ali,  Abu  Thalab's  son,  were  his 
first  converts. 

He  spoke  of  his  doctrine  to  this  man  and  that ;  but 
the  most  treated  it  with  ridicule,  with  indifference;  in 
three  years,  I  think,  he  had  gained  but  thirteen  fol- 
lowers. His  progress  was  slow  enough.  His  encour- 
agement to  go  on,  was  altogether  the  usual  encourage- 
ment that  such  a  man  in  such  a  case  meets.  After 
some  three  years  of  small  success,  he  invited  forty  of 
his  chief  kindred  to  an  entertainment ;  and  there  stood 
up  and  told  them  what  his  pretension  was :  that  he 
had  this  thing  to  promulgate  abroad  to  all  men  ;  that 
it  was  the  highest  thing,  the  one  thing  :  which  of  them 
would  second  him  in  that  ?  Amid  the  doubt  and 
silence  of  all,  young  Ali,  as  yet  a  lad  of  sixteen,  im- 
patient of  the  silence,  started  up  and  exclaimed  in  pas-' 
sionate  fierce  language,  that  he  would !  The  assembly, 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  69 

among  whom  was  Abu  Thaleb,  All's  father,  could  not 
be  unfriendly  to  Mahomet ;  yet  the  sight  there,  of  one 
unlettered  elderly  man,  with  a  lad  of  sixteen,  deciding 
on  such  an  enterprise  against  all  mankind,  appeared 
ridiculous  to  them ;  the  assembly  broke  up  in  laughter. 
Nevertheless  it  proved  not  a  laughable  thing  ;  it  was  a 
very  serious  thing  !  As  for  this  young  All,  one  cannot 
but  like  him.  A  noble-minded  creature,  as  he  shows 
himself,  now  and  always  afterward ;  full  of  affection, 
of  fiery  daring.  Something  chivalrous  in  him ;  brave 
as  a  lion ;  yet  with  a  grace,  a  truth  and  aifection 
worthy  of  Christian  knighthood.  He  died  by  assassin- 
ation in  the  mosque  at  Bagdad  ;  a  death  occasioned  by 
his  own  generous  fairness,  confidence  in  the  fairness  of 
others :  he  said,*"  If  the  wound  proved  not  unto  death, 
they  must  pardon  the  assassin  ;  but  if  it  did,  then  they 
must  slay  him  straightway,  that  so  they  two  in  the 
same  hour  might  appear  before  God  and  see  which  side 
of  that  quarrel  was  the  just  one !  " 

Mahomet  naturally  gave  offense  to  the  Koreish, 
keepers  of  the  Caabah,  superintendents  of  the  idols. 
One  or  two  men  of  influence  had  joined  him  :  the  thing 
spread  slowly,  but  it  was  spreading.  Naturally  he  gave 
offense  to  everybody :  who  is  this  that  pretends  to  be 
wiser  than  we  all ;  that  rebukes  us  all,  as  mere  fools 
and  worshipers  of  wood  !  Abu  Thaleb  the  good  uncle 
spoke  with  him :  "  Could  he  not  be  silent  about  all 
that ;  believe  it  all  for  himself  and  not  trouble  others, 
anger  the  chief  men,  endanger  himself  and  them  all, 
talking  of  it  ri  "  Mahomet  answered  :  "  If  the  sun 
stood  on  his  right  hand  and  the  moon  on  his  left, 
ordering  him  to  hold  his  peace,  he  could  not  obey ! 
No :  there  was  something  in  this  truth  he  had  got 
which  was  of  nature  herself ;  equal  in  rank  to  sun,  or 


70  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

moon,  or  whatsoever  thing  nature  had  made.  It  would 
speak  itself  there,  so  long  as  the  Almighty  allowed  it, 
in  spite  of  sun  and  moon  and  all  Koreish  and  all  men 
and  things.  It  must  do  that  and  could  do  no  other." 
Mahomet  answered  so ;  and,  they  say,  "  burst  into 
tears."  Burst  into  tears  :  he  felt  that  Abu  Thaleb  w. 
good  to  him ;  that  the  task  he  had  got  was  no  soft,  but 
a  stern  and  great  one. 

He  went  on  speaking  to  who  would  listen  to  him  ; 
publishing  his  doctrine  among  the  pilgrims  as  they  came 
to  Mecca ;  gaining  adherents  in  this  place  and  that. 
Continual  contradiction,  hatred,  open  or  secret  danger 
attended  him.  His  powerful  relations  protected 
Mahomet  himself ;  but  by  and  by,  on  Jiis  own  advice, 
all  his  adherents  had  to  quit  Mecca,  and  seek  refuge  in 
Abyssinia  over  the  sea.  The  Koreish  grew  ever 
angrier ;  laid  plots  and  swore  oaths  among  them,  to 
put  Mahomet  to  death  with  their  own  hands.  Abu 
Thaleb  was  dead,  the  good  Kadijah  was  dead.  Ma- 
homet is  not  solicitous  of  sympathy  from  us;  but  his 
outlook  at  this  time  was  one  of  the  dismalest.  He  had 
to  hide  in  caverns,  escape  in  disguise ;  fly  hither  and 
thither;  homeless,  in  continual  peril  of  his  life.  More 
than  once  it  seemed  all  over  with  him ;  more  than 
once  it  turned  on  a  straw,  some  rider's  horse  taking 
fright  or  the  like,  whether  Mahomet  and  his  doctrine 
had  not  ended  there  and  not  been  heard  of  at  all.  But 
it  was  not  to  end  so. 

In  the  thirteenth  year  of  his  mission,  finding  his 
enemies  all  banded  against  him,  forty  sworn  men,  one 
out  of  every  tribe,  waiting  to  take  his  life  and  no  con- 
tinuance possible  at  Mecca  for  him  any  longer,  Ma- 
homet fled  to  the  place  then  called  Yathreb,  where  he 
had  gained  some  adherents ;  the  place  they  now  call 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  71 

Medina,  or  " Medinat  al  Ncibi,  the  city  of  the  prophet," 
from  that  circumstance.  It  lay  some  200  miles  off, 
through  rocks  and  deserts  ;  not  without  great  difficulty, 
in  such  mood  as  we  may  fancy,  he  escaped  thither  and 
found  welcome.  The  whole  East  dates  its  era  from 
this  flight,  Hegira  as  they  name  it :  the  year  1  of  this 
Hegira  is  622  of  our  era,  the  fifty-third  of  Mahomet's 
life.  He  was  now  becoming  an  old  man ;  his  friends 
sinking  round  him  one  by  one ;  his  path  desolate,  en- 
compassed with  danger :  unless  he  could  find  hope  in 
his  own  heart,  the  outward  face  of  things  was  but  hope- 
less for  him.  It  is  so  with  all  men  in  the  like  case. 
Hitherto  Mahomet  had  professed  to  publish  his  relig- 
ion by  the  way  of  preaching  and  persuasion  alone. 
But  now,  driven  foully  out  of  his  native  country,  since 
unjust  men  had  not  only  given  no  ear  to  his  earnest 
heaven's-message,  the  deep  cry  of  his  heart,  but  would 
not  even  let  him  live  if  he  kept  speaking  it — the  wild 
son  of  the  desert  resolved  to  defend  himself,  like  a  man 
and  Arab.  If  the  Koreish  will  have  it  so,  they  shall 
have  it.  Tidings,  felt  to  be  of  infinite  moment  to  them 
and  all  men,  they  would  not  listen  to  these ;  would 
trample  them  down  by  sheer  violence,  steel  and  mur- 
der :  well,  let  steel  try  it  then !  Ten  years  more  this 
Mahomet  had  ;  all  of  fighting,  of  breathless  impetuous 
toil  and  struggle  ;  with  what  result  we  know. 

Much  has  been  said  of  Mahomet's  propagating  his 
religion  by  the  sword.  It  is  no  doubt  far  nobler  what 
we  have  to  boast  of  the  Christian  religion,  that  it  pro- 
pagated itself  peaceably  in  the  way  of  preaching  and 
conviction.  Yet  withal,  if  we  take  this  for  an  argu- 
ment of  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  a  religion,  there  is  a 
radical  mistake  in  it.  The  sword  indeed  :  but  where 
will  you  get  your  sword !  Every  new  opinion,  at  its 


72  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

starting,  is  precisely  in  &  minority  of  one.  In  one 
man's  head  alone,  there  it  dwells  as  yet.  One  man 
alone  of  the  whole  world  believes  it ;  there  is  one  man 
against  all  men.  That  he  take  a  sword  and  try  to  pro- 
pagate with  that,  will  do  little  for  him.  You  must 
first  get  your  sword  !  On  the  whole,  a  thing  will  pro- 
pagate itself  as  it  can.  We  do  not  find,  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion  either,  that  it  always  disdained  the  sword, 
when  once  it  had  got  one.  Charlemagne's  conversion 
of  the  Saxons  was  not  by  preaching.  I  care  little 
about  the  sword  :  I  will  allow  a  thing  to  struggle  for 
itself  in  this  world,  with  any  sword  or  tongue  or  im- 
plement it  has,  or  can  lay  hold  of.  "We  will  let  it 
preach,  and  pamphleteer,  and  fight  and  to  the  utter- 
most bestir  itself  and  do,  beak  and  claws,  whatsoever 
is  in  it;  very  sure  that  it  will,  in  the  long  run,  conquer 
nothing  which  does  not  deserve  to  be  conquered. 
What  is  better  than  itself,  it  cannot  put  away,  but  only 
what  is  worse.  In  this  great  duel,  nature  herself  is 
umpire  and  can  do  no  wrong:  the  thing  which  is 
deepest-rooted  in  nature,  what  we  call  truest,  that 
thing  and  not  the  other  will  be  found  growing  at 
last. 

Here  however,  in  reference  to  much  that  there  is  in 
Mahomet  and  his  success,  we  are  to  remember  what  an 
umpire  nature  is :  what  a  greatness,  composure  of 
depth  and  tolerance  there  is  in  her.  You  take  wheat 
to  cast  into  the  earth's  bosom :  your  wheat  may  be 
mixed  with  chaff,  chopped  straw,  barn-sweepings,  dust 
and  all  imaginable  rubbish;  no  matter  :  you  cast  it  into 
the  kind  just  earth  ;  she  grows  the  wheat— the  whole 
rubbish  she  silently  absorbs  shrouds  it  in,  says  nothing 
of  the  rubbish.  The  yellow  wheat  is  growing  there  ; 
the  good  earth  is  silent  about  all  the  rest — has  silently 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  73 

turned  all  the  rest  to  some  benefit  too,  and  makes  no 
complaint  about  it!  So  every  where  in  nature!  She  is 
true  and  not  a  lie;  and  yet  so  great,  and  just,  and 
motherly  in  her  truth.  She  requires  of  a  thing  only 
that  is  be  genuine  of  heart ;  she  will  protect  it  if  so ;  will 
not,  if  not  so.  There  is  a  soul  of  truth  in  all  the  things 
she  ever  gave  harbor  to.  Alas,  is  not  this  the  history 
of  all  highest  truth  that  comes  or  ever  came  into  the 
world?  The  body  of  them  all  is  imperfection,  an 
element  of  light  in  darkness  :  to  us  they  have  to  come 
embodied  in  mere  logic,  in  some  merely  scientific 
theorem  of  the  universe ;  which  cannot  be  complete ; 
which  cannot  but  be  found,  one  day,  incomplete, 
erroneous,  and  so  die  and  disappear.  The  body  of  all 
truth  dies ;  and  yet  in  all,  I  say,  there  is  a  soul  which 
never  dies ;  which  in  new  and  ever-nobler  embodiment 
lives  immortal  as  man  himself !  It  is  the  way  with 
nature.  The  genuine  essence  of  truth  never  dies.  That 
it  be  genuine,  a  voice  from  the  great  deep  of  nature, 
there  is  the  point  at  nature's  judgment-seat.  What 
we  call  pure  or  impure,  is  not  with  her  the  final  question. 
]STot  how  much  chaff  is  in  you ;  but  whether  you  have 
any  wheat.  Pure  ?  I  might  say  to  many  a  man :  Yes, 
you  are  pure ;  pure  enough ;  but  you  are  chaff — insin- 
cere hypothesis,  hearsay,  formality  ;  you  never  were  in 
contact  with  the  great  heart  of  the  universe  at  all ;  you 
are  properly  neither  pure  nor  impure ;  you  are  nothing, 
nature  has  no  business  with  you. 

Mahomet's  creed  we  called  a  kind  of  Christianity ; 
and  really,  if  we  look  at  the  wild  rapt  earnestness  with 
which  it  was  believed  and  laid  to  heart,  I  should  say  a 
better  kind  than  that  of  those  miserable  Syrian  sects, 
with  their  vain  janglings  about  ^  Jiomoiousian  and 
homoousion,  the  head  full  of  worthless  noise,  the  heart 


74  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

empty  and  dead !  The  truth  of  it  is  embedded  in  por- 
tentous error  and  falsehood ;  but  the  truth  of  it  makes  it 
be  believed,  not  the  falsehood ;  it  succeeded  by  its  truth. 
A  bastard  kind  of  Christianity,  but  a  living  kind ;  with 
a  heart-life  in  it ;  not  dead,  chopping  barren  logic 
merely !  Out  of  all  that  rubbish  of  Arab  idolatries, 
argumentative  theologies,  traditions,  subtleties,  ru- 
mors and  hypotheses  of  Greeks  and  Jews,  with  their  idle 
wiredrawings,  this  wild  man  of  the  desert,  with  his  wild 
sincere  heart,  earnest  as  death  and  life,  with  his  great 
flashing  natural  eyesight,  had  seen  into  the  kernel  of 
the  matter.  Idolatry  is  nothing :  these  wooden  idols  of 
yours,  "  ye  rub  them  with  oil  and  wax,  and  the  flies  stick 
on  them  " — these  are  wood,  I  tell  you !  They  can  do 
nothing  for  you ;  they  are  an  impotent  blasphemous 
pretence  ;  a  horror  and  abomination,  if  ye  knew  them. 
God  alone  is ;  God  alone  has  power :  He  made  us,  He 
can  kill  us  and  keep  us  alive :  "Allah  akbar,  God  is 
great."  Understand  that  His  will  is  the  best  for  you  ; 
that  howsoever  sore  to  flesh-and-blood,  you  will  find  it 
the  wisest,  best :  you  are  bound  to  take  it  so ;  in  this 
world  and  in  the  next,  you  have  no  other  thing  that 
you  can  do ! 

And  now  if  the  wild  idolatrous  men  did  believe  this, 
and  with  their  fiery  hearts  lay  hold  of  it  to  do  it,  in 
what  form  soever  it  came  to  them,  I  say  it  was  well 
worthy  of  being  believed.  In  one  form  or  the  other, 
I  say  it  is  still  the  one  thing  worthy  of  being  believed 
by  all  men.  Man  does  hereby  become  the  high-priest 
of  this  temple  of  a  world.  He  is  in  harmony  with 
the  decrees  of  the  author  of  the  world  ;  co-operating 
with  them,  not  vainly  withstanding  them  :  1  know,  to 
this  day,  no  better  definition  of  duty  than  that  same. 
All  that  is  right  includes  itself  in  this  of  co-operating 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  75 

with  the  real  tendency  of  the  world  :  you  succeed  by 
this  (the  world's  tendency  will  succeed),  you  are  good  and 
in  the  right  course  there.  Homoiousion,  Homoousion 
vain  logical  jangle,  then  or  before  or  at  any  time,  may 
jangle  itself  out,  and  go  whither  and  how  it  likes  :  this 
is  the  thing  it  all  struggles  to  mean,  if  it  would  mean 
anything.  If  it  do  not  succeed  in  meaning  this,  it 
means  nothing.  Not  that  abstractions,  logical  propo- 
sitions, be  correctly  worded  or  incorrectly  ;  but  that 
living  concrete  sons  of  Adam  do  lay  this  to  heart  :  that 
is  the  important  point.  Islam  devoured  all  these  vain 
jangling  sects  ;  and  I  think  had  right  to  do  so.  It  was 
a  reality,  direct  from  the  great  heart  of  nature  once 
more.  Arab  idolatries,  Syrian  formulas,  whatsoever 
was  not  equally  real,  had  to  go  up  in  flame  —  mere  dead 
)  in  various  senses,  for  this  which  was  fire. 


It  was  during  these  wild  warfarings  and  strugglings, 
especially  after  the  flight  to  Mecca,  that  Mahomet 
dictated  at  intervals  his  sacred  book,  which  they  name 
Koran,  or  Reading,  "  thing  to  be  read."  This  is  the 
work  he  and  his  disciples  made  so  much  of,  asking  all 
the  world,  "  Is  not  that  a  miracle  ?"  The  Mahometans 
regard  their  Koran  with  a  reverence  which  few  Chris- 
tians pay  even  to  their  Bible.  It  is  admitted  every- 
where as  the  standard  of  all  law  and  all  practice  ;  the 
thing  to  be  gone  upon  in  speculation  and  life  :  the 
message  sent  direct  out  of  heaven,  which  this  earth  has 
to  conform  to  and  walk  by  ;  the  thing  to  be  read. 
Their  judges  decide  by  it  ;  all  Moslem  are  bound  to 
study  it,  seek  in  it  for  the  light  of  their  life.  They 
have  mosques  where  it  is  all  read  daily  ;  thirty  relays 
of  priests  take  it  up  in  succession,  get  through  the 
whole  each  day.  There,  for  twelve  hundred  years, 


76  LECTURES  ox  HEROES. 

has  the  voice  of  this  book,  at  all  moments,  kept  sound- 
ing through  the  ears  and  the  hearts  of  so  many  men. 
"We  hear  of  Mahometan  doctors  that  had  read  it 
seventy  thousand  times ! 

Yery  curious :  if  one  sought  for  "  discrepancies  of 
national  taste,"  here  surely  were  the  most  eminent  in- 
stance of  that !  "We  also  can  read  the  Koran ;  our 
translation  of  it,  by  Sale,  is  known  to  be  a  very  fair 
one.  I  must  say,  it  is  as  toilsome  reading  as  I  ever 
undertook.  A  wearisome  confused  jumble,  crude,  in- 
condite ;  endless  iterations,  long-windedness,  entangle- 
ment ;  most  crude,  incondite — insupportable  stupidity, 
in  short !  Nothing  but  a  sense  of  duty  could  carry 
any  European  through  the  Koran.  "We  read  in  it,  as 
we  might  in  the  state  paper  office,  unreadable  masses 
of  lumber,  that  perhaps  we  may  get  some  glimpses  of 
a  remarkable  man.  It  is  true  we  have  it  under  disad- 
vantages :  the  Arabs  see  more  method  in  it  than  we. 
Mahomet's  followers  found  the  Koran  lying  all  in 
fractions,  as  it  had  been  written  down  at  first  promul- 
gation ;  much  of  it,  they  say,  on  shoulder-blades  of 
mutton,  flung  pell-mell  into  a  chest :  and  they  pub- 
lished it,  without  any  discoverable  order  as  to  time  or 
otherwise — merely  trying,  as  would  seem,  and  this  not 
very  strictly,  to  put  the  longest  chapters  first.  The 
real  beginning  of  it,  in  that  way,  lies  almost  at  the 
end  :  for  the  earliest  portions  were  the  shortest.  Read 
in  its  historical  sequence  it  perhaps  would  not  be  so 
bad.  Much  of  it,  too,  they  say,  is  rhythmic  ;  a  kind  of 
wild  chanting  song,  in  the  original.  This  may  be  a 
great  point ;  much  perhaps  has  been  lost  in  the  trans- 
lation here.  Yet  with  every  allowance,  one  feels  it 
difficult  to  see  how  any  mortal  ever  could  consider 
this  Koran  as  a  book  written  in  heaven,  too  good  for 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  7? 

the  earth ;  as  a  well-written  book,  or  indeed  as  a  look 
at  all ;  and  not  a  bewildered  rhapsody  ;  written,  so  far 
as  writing  goes,  as  badly  as  almost  any  book  ever  was  ! 
So  much  for  national  discrepancies  and  the  standard 
of  taste. 

Yet  I  should  say,  it  was  not  unintelligible  how  the 
Arabs  might  so  love  it.  When  once  you  get  this  con- 
fused coil  of  a  Koran  fairly  off  your  hands  and  have  it 
behind  you  at  a  distance,  the  essential  type  of  it  begins 
to  disclose  itself;  and  in  this  there  is  a  merit  quite 
other  than  the  literary  one.  If  a  book  come  from  the 
heart,  it  will  contrive  to  reach  other  hearts ;  all  art 
and  authorcraft  are  of  small  amount  to  that.  One 
would  say  the  primary  character  of  the  Koran  is  this 
of  its  genuineness,  of  its  being  a  bonajide  book.  Pri- 
deaux,  I  know,  and  others  have  represented  it  as  a 
mere  bundle  of  juggleries ;  chapter  after  chapter  got 
up  to  excuse  and  varnish  the  author's  successive  sins, 
forward  his  ambitions  and  quackeries :  but  really  it  is 
time  to  dismiss  all  that.  I  do  not  assert  Mahomet's 
continual  sincerity  :  who  is  continually  sincere  ?  But  I 
confess  I  can  make  nothing  of  the  critic,  in  these  times, 
who  would  accuse  him  of  deceit  prepense;  of  conscious 
deceit  generally,  or  perhaps  at  all — still  more,  of  living 
in  a  mere  element  of  conscious  deceit  and  writing  this 
Koran  as  a  forger  and  juggler  would  have  done ! 
Every  candid  eye,  I  think,  will  read  the  Koran  far 
otherwise  than  so.  It  is  the  confused  ferment  of  a 
great  rude  human  soul ;  rude,  untutored,  that  cannot 
even  read,  but  fervent,  earnest,  struggling  vehemently 
to  utter  itself  in  words.  With  a  kind  of  breathless  in- 
tensity he  strives  to  utter  himself  ;  the  thoughts  crowd 
on  him  pell-mell :  for  very  multitude  of  things  to  say, 
he  can  get  nothing  said.  The  meaning  that  is  in  him 


78  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

shapes  itself  into  no  form  of  composition,  is  stated  in 
no  sequence,  method,  or  coherence — they  are  not 
shaped  at  all,  these  thoughts  of  his ;  flung  out  un- 
shaped,  as  they  struggle  and  tumble  there,  in  their 
chaotic  inarticulate  state.  We  said  "  stupid : "  yet 
natural  stupidity  is  by  no  means  the  character  of  Ma- 
homet's book  ;  it  is  natural  uncultivation  rather.  The 
man  has  not  studied  speaking  ;  in  the  haste  and  press- 
ure of  continual  fighting,  has  not  time  to  mature  him- 
self into  fit  speech.  The  panting  breathless  haste  and 
vehemence  of  a  man  struggling  in  the  thick  of  battle 
for  life  and  salvation ;  this  is  the  mood  he  is  in  !  A 
headlong  haste ;  for  very  magnitude  of  meaning,  he 
cannot  get  himself  articulated  into  words.  The  suc- 
cessive utterances  of  a  soul  in  that  mood,  colored  by 
the  various  vicissitudes  of  twenty-three  years;  now 
well  uttered,  now  worse  :  this  is  the  Koran. 

For  we  are  to  consider  Mahomet,  through  these 
twenty-three  years,  as  the  center  of  a  world  wholly  in 
conflict.  Battles  with  the  Kornish  and  Heathen, 
quarrels  among  his  own  people,  backslidings  of  his  own 
wild  heart ;  all  this  kept  him  in  a  perpetual  whirl,  his 
soul  knowing  rest  no  more.  In  wakeful  nights,  as  one 
may  fancy,  the  wild  soul  of  the  man,  tossing  amid 
these  vortices,  would  hail  any  light  of  a  decision  for 
them  as  a  veritable  light  from  heaven ;  any  making 
up  of  his  mind,  so  blessed,  indispensable  for  him  there, 
would  seem  the  inspiration  of  a  Gabriel.  Forger  and 
juggler  ?  No,  no !  This  great  fiery  heart,  seething, 
simmering  like  a  great  furnace  of  thoughts,  was  not  a 
juggler's.  His  life  was  a  fact  to  him ;  this  God's  uni- 
verse an  awful  fact  and  reality.  He  has  faults  enough. 
The  man  was  an  uncultured  semi-barbarous  son  of 
nature,  much  of  the  Beelojiln  still  clinging  to  him  :  we 


THE  HERO  AS  PJtOPHET.  79 

must  take  him  for  that.  But  for  a  wretched  simula- 
crum, a  hungry  impostor  without  eyes  or  heart,  prac- 
ticing fora  mess  of  pottage  such  blasphemous  swindlery, 
forgery  of  celestial  documents,  continual  high  treason 
against  his  Maker  and  self,  we  will  not  and  cannot 
take  him. 

Sincerity,  in  all  senses,  seems  to  me  the  merit  of  the 
Koran ;  what  had  rendered  it  precious  to  the  wild 
Arab  men.  It  is,  after  all,  the  first  and  last  merit  in  a 
book ;  gives  rise  to  merits  of  all  kinds— nay,  at  bottom, 
it  alone  can  give  rise  to  merit  of  any  kind.  Curiously, 
through  these  incondite  masses  of  tradition,  vitupera- 
tion, complaint,  ejaculation  in  the  Koran,  a  vein  of 
true  direct  insight,  of  what  we  might  almost  call 
poetry,  is  found  straggling.  The  body  of  the  book  is 
made  up  of  mere  tradition  and  as  it  were  vehement  en- 
thusiastic extempore  preaching.  He  returns  forever 
to  the  old  stories  of  the  prophets  as  they  went  current 
in  the  Arab  memory  :  how  prophet  after  prophet,  the 
prophet  Abraham,  the  prophet  Hud,  the  prophet  Moses, 
Christian  and  other  real  and  fabulous  prophets,  had 
come  to  this  tribe  and  to  that,  warning  men  of  their 
sin  ;  and  been  received  by  them  even  as  he  Mahomet 
was — which  is  a  great  solace  to  him.  These  things  he 
repeats  ten,  perhaps  twenty  times ;  again  and  ever 
again,  with  wearisome  iteration ;  has  never  done  re- 
peating them.  A  brave  Samuel  Johnson,  in  his  forlorn 
garret,  might  con-over  the  biographies  of  authors  in 
that  way  !  This  is  the  great  staple  of  the  Koran.  But 
curiously,  through  all  this,  comes  ever  and  anon  some 
glance  as  of  the  real  thinker  and  seer.  He  has  actually 
an  eye  for  the  world,  this  Mahomet :  with  a  certain 
directness  and  rugged  vigor,  he  brings  home  still,  to 
our  heart,  the  thing  his  own  heart  has  been  opened  to. 


80  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

I  make  but  little  of  his  praises  of  Allah,  which  many 
praise  ;  they  are  borrowed  I  suppose  mainly  from  the 
Hebrew,  at  least  they  are  far  surpassed  there.  But 
the  eye  that  flashes  direct  into  the  heart  of  things  and 
sees  the  truth  of  them  ;  this  is  to  me  a  highly  interest- 
ing object.  Great  nature's  own  gift;  which  she 
bestows  on  all ;  but  which  only  one  in  the  thousand 
does  not  cast  sorrowfully  away  :  it  is  what  I  call  sin- 
cerity of  vision ;  the  test  of  a  sincere  heart. 

Mahomet  can  work  no  miracles ;  he  often  answers 
.  impatiently  :  "  I  can  work  no  miracles.  I  ?  I  am 
public  preacher;  appointed  to  preach  this  doctrine 
to  all  creatures."  Yet  the  world,  as  we  can  see,  had 
really  from  of  old  been  all  one  great  miracle  to  him. 
Look  over  the  world,  says  he ;  is  it  not  wonderful,  the 
work  of  Allah  ;  wholly  "  a  sign  to  you,"  if  your  eyes 
were  open !  This  earth,  God  made  it  for  you ;  "  ap- 
pointed paths  in  it ;"  you  can  live  in  it,  go  to  and  fro 
on  it.  The  clouds  in  the  dry  country  of  Arabia,  to 
Mahomet  they  are  very  wonderful :  great  clouds,  he 
says,  born  in  the  deep  bosom  of  the  upper  immensity, 
where  do  they  come  from  !  They  hang  there,  the 
great  black  monsters ;  pour  down  their  rain  deluges 
"to  revive  a  dead  earth,"  and  grass  springs,  and  "tall 
leafy  palm-trees  with  their  date-clusters  hanging 
round.  Is  not  that  a  sign  ? "  Your  cattle  too — 
Allah  made  them;  serviceable  dumb  creatures ;  they 
change  the  grass  into  milk ;  you  have  your  clothing 
from  them,  very  strange  creatures  ;  they  come  ranking 
home  at  evening-time,  "  and,"  adds  he,  "  and  are  a 
credit  to  you ! "  Ships  also — he  talks  often  about 
ships :  huge  moving  mountains,  they  spread  out  their 
cloth  wings,  go  bounding  through  the  water  there, 
heaven's  wind  driving  them ;  anon  they  lie  motionless, 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  81 

God  has  withdrawn  the  wind,  they  lie  dead  and  can- 
not stir  !  Miracles  ?  cries  he :  What  miracle  would 
you  have  \  Are  not  you  yourselves  there  ?  God  made 
you,  "  shaped  you  out  of  a  little  clay."  Ye  were  small 
once;  a  few  years  ago  ye  were  not  at  all.  Ye  have 
beauty,  strength,  thoughts,  "ye  have  compassion  on 
one  another."  Old  age  comes  on  you  and  gray  hairs  ; 
your  strength  fades  into  feebleness;  ye  sink  down, 
and  again  are  not.  "  Ye  have  compassion  on  one 
another : "  this  struck  me  much  :  Allah  might  have  j 
made  you  having  no  compassion  on  one  another — how 
had  it  been  then  !  This  is  a  great  direct  thought,  a 
glance  at  first-hand  into  the  very  fact  of  things.  Eude 
vestiges  of  poetic  genius,  of  whatsoever  is  best  and 
truest,  are  visible  in  this  man.  A  strong  untutored 
intellect;  eyesight,  heart:  a  strong  wild  man — might 
have  shaped  himself  into  poet,  king,  priest,  any  kind 
of  hero. 

To  his  eyes  it  is  forever  clear  that  this  world  wholly 
is  miraculous.  He  sees  what,  as  we  said  once  before, 
all  great  thinkers,  the  rude  Scandinavians  themselves, 
in  one  way  or  other,  have  contrived  to  see :  that  this 
so  solid-looking  material  world  is,  at  bottom,  in  very 
deed,  nothing ;  is  a  visual  and  tactual  manifestation  of 
God's  power  and  presence — a  shadow  hung  out  by  Him 
on  the  bosom  of  the  void  infinite  ;  nothing  more.  The 
mountains,  he  says,  these  great  rock  mountains,  they 
shall  dissipate  themselves  "  like  clouds ; "  melt  into  the 
blue  as  clouds  do  and  not  be !  He  figures  the  earth, 
in  the  Arab  fashion,  Sale  tells  us,  as  an  immense  plain 
on  that  plate  of  ground,  the  mountains  are  set  on  that 
to  steady  it.  At  the  last  day  they  shall  disappear 
"like  clouds;"  the  whole  earth  shall  go  spinning, 
whirl  itself  off  into  wreck  and  as  dust  and  vapor  vanish 


82  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

in  the  inane.  Allah  withdraws  his  hand  from  it  and 
it  ceases  to  be.  The  universal  empire  of  Allah,  pres- 
ence everywhere  of  an  unspeakable  power,  a  splendor 
and  a  terror  not  to  be  named,  as  the  true  force,  essence 
and  reality,  in  all  things  whatsoever,  was  continually 
clear  to  this  man.  What  a  modern  talks  of  by  the 
name,  forces  of  nature,  laws  of  nature  ;  and  does  not 
figure  as  a  divine  thing  ;  not  even  as  one  thing  at  all, 
but  as  a  set  of  things,  undivine  enough — saleable, 
curious,  good  for  propelling  steam-ships!  With  our 
sciences  and  cyclopedias,  we  are  apt  to  forget  the 
divineness,  in  those  laboratories  of  ours.  We  ought 
not  to  forget  it !  That  once  well  forgotten,  I  know 
not  what  else  were  worth  remembering.  Most  sciences, 
I  think,  were  then  a  very  dead  thing;  withered,  con- 
tentious, empty — a  thistle  in  late  autumn.  The  best 
science,  without  this,  is  but  as  the  dead  timber  ;  it  is 
not  the  growing  tree  and  forest — which  gives  ever-new 

1  timber,  among  other  things !  Man  cannot  know  either, 
unless  he  can  worship  in  some  way.  His  knowledge  is 
a  pedantry  and  dead  thistle,  otherwise. 

Much  has  been  said  and  written  about  the  sensuality 
of  Mahomet's  religion  ;  more  than  was  just.  The  in- 
dulgences, criminal  to  us,  which  he  permitted,  were 
not  of  his  appointment;  he  found  them  practiced,  un- 
questioned from  immemorial  time  in  Arabia  ;  what  he 
did  was  to  curtail  them,  restrict  them,  not  on  one  but 
on  many  sides.  His  religion  is  not  an  easy  one  :  with 
rigorous  fasts,  lavations,  strict  complex  formulas, 
prayers  five  times  a  day,  and  abstinence  from  wine,  it 
did  not  "  succeed  by  being  an  easy  religion/'  As  if 
indeed  any  religion,  or  cause  holding  of  religion,  could 
succeed  by  that !  It  is  a  calumny  on  men  to  say  that 
they  are  roused  to  heroic  action  by  ease,  hope  of 


T1IE  HERO  AS  PfiOPtiET.  83 

pleasure,  recompense — sugar-plums  of  any  kind,  in  this 
world  or  the  next !  In  the  meanest  mortal  there  lies 
something  nobler.  The  poor  swearing  soldier,  hired 
to  be  shot,  has  his  "  honor  of  a  soldier,"  different  from 
drill-regulations  and  the  shilling  a  day.  It  is  not  to 
taste  sweet  things,  but  to  do  noble  and  true  things  and 
vindicate  himself  under  God's  heaven  as  a  god-made 
man,  that  the  poorest  son  of  Adam  dimly  longs.  Show 
him  the  way  of  doing  that,  the  dullest  daydrudge 
kindles  into  a  hero.  They  wrong  man  greatly  who 
say  he  is  to  be  seduced  by  ease.  Difficulty,  abnegation, 
martyrdom,  death  are  the  allurements  that  act  on  the 
heart  of  man.  Kindle  the  inner  genial  life  of  him,  you 
have  a  flame  that  burns  up  all  lower  considerations. 
Not  happiness,  but  something  higher :  one  sees  this 
even  in  the  frivolous  classes,  with  their  "  point  of 
honor  "  and  the  like.  Not  by  flattering  our  appetites ; 
no,  by  awakening  the  heroic  that  slumbers  in  every 
heart,  can  any  religion  gain  followers. 

Mahomet  himself,  after  all  that  can  be  said  about 
him,  was  not  a  sensual  man.  "We  shall  err  widely  if  we 
consider  this  man  as  a  common  voluptuary,  intent 
mainly  on  base  enjoyments — nay  on  enjoyments  of  any 
kind.  His  household  was  of  the  f  rugalest ;  his  common 
diet  barley-bread  and  water :  sometimes  for  months 
there  was  not  a  fire  once  lighted  on  his  hearth.  They 
record  with  just  pride  that  he  would  mend  his  own 
shoes,  patch  his  own  cloak.  A  poor,  hard-toiling,  ill- 
provided  man  ;  careless  of  what  vulgar  men  toil  for. 
Not  a  bad  man,  I  should  say  ;  something  better  in  him 
than  hunger  of  any  sort — or  these  wild  Arab  men, 
fighting  and  jostling  twenty-three  years  at  his  hand, 
in  close  contact  with  him  always,  would  not  have  rev- 
erencecl  him  so !  They  were  wild  men,  bursting  ever 


84  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

and  anon  into  quarrel,  into  all  kinds  of  fierce  sincerity; 
without  right  worth  and  manhood,  no  man  could  have 
commanded  them.  They  called  him  prophet,  }rou  say  ? 
Why,  he  stood  there  face  to  face  with  them  ;  bare,  not 
enshrined  in  any  mystery  ;  visibly  clouting  his  own 
cloak,  cobbling  his  own  shoes ;  fighting,  counseling, 
ordering  in  the  midst  of  them  :  they  must  have  seen 
what  kind  of  a  man  he  was,  let  him  be  called  what  you 
like!  No  emperor  with  his  tiaras  was  obeyed  as  this 
man  in  a  cloak  of  his  own  clouting.  During  twenty- 
three  years  of  rough  actual  trial.  I  find  something  of 
a  veritable  hero  necessary  for  that,  of  itself. 

His  last  words  are  a  prayer ;  broken  ejaculations  of 
a  heart  struggling  up,  in  trembling  hope,  toward  its 
Maker.  We  cannot  say  that  his  religion  made  him 
worse  •  it  made  him  better  ;  good,  not  bad.  Generous 
things  are  recorded  of  him  :  when  he  lost  his  daughter, 
the  thing  he  answers  is,  in  his  own  dialect,  everyway 
sincere,  and  }ret  equivalent  to  that  of  Christians,^"  The 
Lord  giveth,  and  the  Lord  taketh  away  ;  blessed  be 
the  name  of  the  Lord."  He  answered  in  like  manner 
of  Seid,  his  emancipated  well-beloved  slave,  the  second 
of  the  believers.  Seid  had  fallen  in  the  war  of  Tabuc, 
the  first  of  Mahomet's  fightings  with  the  Greeks.  Ma- 
homet said,  it  was  well ;  Seid  had  done  his  Master's 
work,  Seid  had  now  gone  to  his  Master  :  it  was  all  well 
with  Seid.  Yet  Seid's  daughter  found  him  weeping  over 
the  body — the  old  gray-haired  man  melting  in  tears  ! 
"  What  do  you  see  ?"  said  she.  "  You  see  a  friend 
weeping  over  his  friend."  He  went  out  for  the  last 
time  into  the  mosque,  two  days  before  his  death  ; 
asked,  if  he  had  injured  any  man  ?  Let  his  own  back 
bear  the  stripes.  If  he  owed  any  man?  A  voice 
answered,  "Yes,  me  three  drachms,"  borrowed  on 


THE  HERO  AS  PXOPHET.  85 

such  an  occasion.  Mahomet  ordered  them  to  be  paid  : 
"  Better  be  in  shame  now,"  said  he,  '•  than  at  the  day 
of  judgement."  You  remember  Kadijah,  and  the  "  no, 
by  Allah  !  "  Traits  of  that  kind  show  u»  the  genuine 
man,  the  brother  of  us  all,  brought  visible  through 
twelve  centuries — the  veritable  son  of  our  common 
mother. 

Withal  I  like  Mahomet  for  his  total  freedom  from 
cant.  He  is  a  rough  self-helping  son  of  the  wilder- 
ness ;  does  not  pretend  to  be  what  he  is  not.  There  is 
no  ostentatious  pride  in  him  ;  but  neith  er  does  he  go 
much  upon  humility  :  he  is  there  as  he  can  be,  in  cloak 
and  shoes  of  his  own  clouting;  speaks  plainly  to  all 
manner  of  Persian  kings,  Greek  emperors,  what  it  is 
they  are  bound  to  do ;  knows  well  enough,  about  him- 
self, "the  respect  due  unto  thee."-  In  a  life-and-death 
war  with  Bedouins,  cruel  things  could  not  fail;  but 
neither  are  acts  of  mercy,  of  noble  natural  pity  and 
generosity  wanting.  Mahomet  makes  no  apology  for 
the  one,  no  boast  of  the  other.  They  were  each  the 
free  dictate  of  his  heart ;  each  called  for,  there  and 
then.  Not  a  mealy-mouthed  man!  A  candid  ferocity, 
if  the  case  call  for  it,  is  in  him;  he  does  not  mince 
matters  !  The  war  of  Tabuc  is  a  thing  he  often  speaks 
of  :  his  men  refused,  many  of  them,  to  march  on  that 
occasion ;  pleaded  the  heat  of  the  weather,  the  harvest, 
and  so  forth ;  he  can  never  forget  that.  Your  har- 
vest ?  It  lasts  for  a  day.  What  will  become  of  your 
harvest  through  all  eternity  ?  Hot  weather  ?  Yes,  it 
was  hot;  "but  hell  will  be  hotter!"  Sometimes  a 
rough  sarcasm  turns  up :  he  says  to  the  unbelievers, 
ye  shall  have  the  just  measure  of  your  deeds  at  that 
great  day.  They  will  be  weighed  out  to  you  ;  ye  shall 
not  have  short  weight!  Everywhere  he  fixes  the 


86  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

matter  in  his  eye ;  he  sees  it :  his  heart,  now  and  then, 
is  as  if  struck  dumb  by  the  greatness  of  it.  "As- 
suredly," he  says :  that  word,  in  the  Koran,  is  writ- 
ten down  sometimes  as  a  sentence  by  itself :  "As- 
suredly." 

No  dilettantism  in  this  Mahomet ;  it  is  a  business  of 
reprobation  and  salvation  with  him,  of  time  and  eter- 
nity :  he  is  in  deadly  earnest  about  it !  Dilettantism, 
hypothesis,  speculation,  a  kind  of  amateur  search  for 
truth,  toying  and  coquetting  with  truth :  this  is  the 
sorest  sin.  The  root  of  all  other  imaginable  sins.  It 
consists  in  the  heart  and  soul  of  the  man  never  having 
been  open  to  truth — "  living  in  a  vain  show."  Such  a 
man  not  only  utters  and  produces  falsehoods,  but  is 
himself  a  falsehood.  The  rational  moral  principle, 
sparks  of  the  divinity,  is  sunk  deep  in  him,  in  quiet 
paralysis  of  life-death.  The  very  falsehoods  of  Ma- 
homet are  truer  than  the  truths  of  such  a  man.  He  is 
the  insincere  man:  smooth-polished,  respectable  in  some 
times  and  places;  inoffensive,  says  nothing  harsh  to 
anybody ;  most  cleanly — just  as  carbonic  acid  is,  which 
is  death  and  poison. 

We  will  not  praise  Mahomet's  moral  precepts  as 
always  of  the  superfinest  sort ;  yet  it  can  be  said  that 
there  is  always  a  tendency  to  good  in  them  ;  that  they 
are  the  true  dictates  of  a  heart  aiming  toward  what  is 
just  and  true.  The  sublime  forgiveness  of  Christanity, 
turning  of  the  other  cheek  when  the  one  has  been 
smitten,  is  not  here  :  you  are  to  revenge  yourself,  but 
it  is  to  be  in  measure,  not  overmuch,  or  beyond  justice. 
On  the  other  hand,  Islam,  like  any  great  faith,  and 
insight  into  the  essence  of  man,  is  a  perfect  equalizer 
of  men  :  the  soul  of  one  believer  outweighs  all  earthly 
kingships ;  all  men,  according  to  Islam  too,  are  equal. 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  87 

Mahomet  insists  not  on  the  propriety  of  giving  alms,  \ 
but  on  the  necessity  of  it:  he  marks do\vn  by  law  how  / 
much  you  are  to  give,  and  it  is  at  your  peril  if  you  neg- 
lect.   The  tenth  part  of  a  man's  annual  income,  what- 
ever that  may  be,  is  the  property  of  the  poor,  of  those 
that  are  afflicted  and  need  help.     Good  all  this :  the 
natural  voice  of  humanity,  of  pity  and  equity  dwelling 
in  the  heart  of  this  wild  son  of  nature  speaks  so. 

Mahomet's  paradise  is  sensual,  his  hell  sensual :  true ; 
in  the  one  and  the  other  there  is  enough  that  shocks 
all  spirtual  feeling  in  us.  But  we  are  to  recollect  that 
the  Arabs  already  had  it  so ;  that  Mahomet,  in  what- 
ever he  changed  of  it,  softened  and  diminished  all  this. 
The  worst  sensualities,  too,  are  the  work  of  doctors, 
followers  of  his,  not  his  work.  In  the  Koran  there  is 
really  very  little  said  about  the  joys  of  paradise  ;  they 
are  intimated  rather  than  insisted  on.  Nor  is  it  for- 
gotten that  the  highest  joys  even  there  shall  be  spirit- 
ual ;  the  poor  presence  of  the  highest,  this  shall  infi- 
nitely transcend  all  other  joys.  He  says,  "Your  saluta- 
tion shall  be  peace."  Salam,  have  peace — the  thing 
that  all  rational  souls  long  for,  and  seek,  vainly  here 
below,  as  the  one  blessing.  "Ye  shall  sit  on  seats, 
facing  one  another  :  all  grudges  shall  be  taken  away 
out  of  your  hearts."  All  grudges !  Ye  shall  love  one 
another  freely ;  for  each  of  you,  in  the  eyes  of  his 
brothers,  there  will  be  heaven  enough ! 

In  reference  to  this  of  the  sensual  paradise  and  Ma- 
homet's sensuality,  the  sorest  chapter  of  all  for  us, 
there  were  many  things  to  be  said ;  which  it  is  not 
convenient  to  enter  upon  here  Two  remarks  only  I 
shall  make,  and  therewith  leave  it  to  your  candor. 
The  first  is  "furnished  me  by  Goethe ;  it  is  a  casual  hint 
of  his  which  seems  well  worth  taking  note  of.  In  one 


88  LECTURES  ON  UEROtiS. 

of  his  delineations,  in  "  Meister's  Travels "  it  is,  the 
hero  comes  upon  a  society  of  men  with  very  strange 
ways,  one  of  which  was  this :  "  We  require,"  says  the 
master,  "  that  each  of  our  people  shall  restrict  himself 
in  one  direction,"  shall  go  right  against  his  desire  in 
one  matter,  and  make  himself  do  the  thing  he  does  not 
wish,  "  should  we  allow  him  the  greater  latitude  on  all 
other  sides."  There  seems  to  me  a  great  justness  in 
this.  Enjoying  things  which  are  pleasant ;  that  is  not 
the  evil :  it  is  the  reducing  of  our  moral  self  to 
slavery  by  them  that  is.  Let  a  man  assert  withal 
that  he  is  king  over  his  habitudes ;  that  he  could 
and  would  shake  them  off,  on  cause  shown  :  this  is  an 
excellent  law.  The  month  Ramadhan  for  the  Moslem, 
much  in  Mahomet's  religion,  much  in  his  own  life, 
bears  in  that  direction;  if  not  by  forethought,  or 
clear  purpose  of  moral  improvement  on  his  part, 
than  by  a  certain  healthy  manful  instinct,  which  is  as 
good. 

But  there  is  another  thing  to  be  said  about  the  Ma- 
hometan heaven  and  hell.  This  namely,  that  however 
gross  and  material  they  may  be,  they  are  an  emblem  of 
an  everlasting  truth,  not  always  so  well  remembered 
elsewhere.  That  gross  sensual  paradise  of  his ;  that 
horrible  flaming  hell ;  the  great  enormous  day  of 
judgement  he  perpetually  insists  on :  what  is  all  this 
but  a  rude  shadow,  in  the  rude  Bedouin  imagination, 
of  that  grand  spiritual  fact  and  beginning  of  facts, 
which  it  is  ill  for  us  too  if  we  do  not  all  know  and  feel : 
the  infinite  nature  of  duty?  That  man's  actions  here 
are  of  infinite  moment  to  him  and  never  die  or  end  at 
all;  that  man,  with  his  little  life,  reaches  upward 
high  as  heaven,  downward  low  as  hell  and  in  his 
three-score  years  of  time  holds  an  eternity  fearfully 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  89 

and  wonderfully  hidden :  all  this  had  burned  itself,  as 
in  flame-characters  into  the  wild  Arab  soul.  Asm 
flame  and  lightning,  it  stands  written  there;  awful, 
unspeakable,  ever  present  to  him.  With  bursting 
earnestness,  with  a  fierce  savage  sincerity,  halt,  artic- 
ulating, not  able  to  articulate,  he  strives  to  speak  it, 
bodies  it  forth  in  that  heaven  and  that  hell.  Bodied 
forth  in  what  way  you  will,  it  is  the  first  of  all  truths. 
It  is  venerable  under  all  embodiments.  What  is  the 
chief  end  of  man  here  below  ?  Mahomet  has  answered 
this  question,  in  a  way  that  might  put  some  of  us  to 
.shame !  He  does  not,  like  a  Bentham,  a  Paley,  take  , 
right  and  wrong  and  calculate  the  profit  and  loss,  ulti- 
mate pleasure  of  the  one  and  of  the  other ;  and  sum- 
ming all  up  by  addition  and  subtraction  into  a  net  re- 
sult, ask  you,  whether  on  the  whole  the  right  does  not 
preponderate  considerably  ?  No ;  it  is  not  better  to  do 
the  one  than  the  other  ;  the  one  is  to  the  other  as  life 
is  to  death — as  heaven  is  to  hell.  The  one  must  in  no- 
wise be  done,  the  other  in  nowise  left  undone.  You 
shall  not  measure  them ;  they  are  incommeasurable : 
the  one  is  death  eternal  to  a  man,  the  other  is  life 
eternal.  Benthamee  utility,  virtue  by  profit  and  loss ; 
reducing  this  God's-world  to  a  dead  brute  steam-engine, 
the  infinite  celestial  soul  of  man  to  a  kind  of  hay-bal- 
ance for  weighing  hay  and  thistles  on,  pleasures  and 
pains  on :  If  you  ask  me  which  gives,  Mahomet  or  they,  * 
the  beggarlier  and  falser  view  of  man  and  his  des- 
tinies in  this  universe,  I  will  answer :  It  is  not  Ma- 
homet ! 

On  the  whole,  we  will  repeat  that  this  religion  of 
Mahomet's  is  a  kind  of  Christianity ;  has  a  genuine  ele- 
ment of  what  is  spiritually  highest  looking  through  it, 
not  to  be  hidden  by  all  its  imperfections.  The  Scandi- 


90  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

navian  god  Wish,  the  god  of  all  rude  men — this  has 
been  enlarged  into  a  heaven  by  Mahomet ;  but  a 
heaven  symbolical  of  sacred  duty  and  to  be  earned  by 
faith  and  well-doing,  by  valiant  action  and  a  divine 
patience  which  is  still  more  valiant.  It  is  Scandinavian 
paganism  and  a  truly  celestial  element  superadded  to 
that.  Call  it  not  false  ;  look  not  at  the  falsehood  of  it, 
Look  at  the  truth  of  it.  For  these  twelve  centuries,  it 
has  been  the  religion  and  life-guidance  of  the  fifth 
part  of  the  whole  kindred  of  mankind.  Above  all 
things,  it  has  been  a  religion  heartily  believed.  These 
Arabs  believe  their  religion  and  try  to  live  by  it !  No 
Christians,  since  the  early  ages,  or  only  perhaps  the 
English  Puritans  in  modern  times,  have  ever  stood  by 
their  faith  as  the  Moslem  do  by  theirs — believing  it 
wholly,  fronting  time  with  it  and  eternity  with  it. 
This  night  the  watchman  on  the  streets  of  Cairo  when 
he  cries :  "  Who  goes  ? "  will  hear  from  the  messenger, 
along  with  his  answer :  "  There  is  no  God  but  God." 
Allah  alcbar,  Islam,  sounds  through  the  souls  and  whole 
daily  existence,  of  these  dusky  millions.  Zealous  mis- 
sionaries preach  it  abroad  among  Malays,  black  Pap- 
uans, brutal  idolaters — displacing  what  is  worse,  noth- 
ing that  is  better  or  good. 

To  the  Arab  nation  it  was  as  a  birth  from  darkness 
into  light ;  Arabia  first  became  alive  by  means  of  it. 
A  poor  shepherd  people,  roaming  unnoticed  in  its 
deserts  since  the  creation  of  the  world  :  a  hero-prophet 
was  sent  down  to  them  with  a  word  they  could  believe : 
see,  the  unnoticed  becomes  world-notable,  the  small 
has  grown  world-great ;  within  one  century  afterward, 
Arabia  is  at  Grenada  on  this  hand,  at  Delhi  on  that — 
glancing  in  valor  and  splendor  and  the  light  of  genius, 
Arabia  shines  through  long  ages  over  a  great  section 


THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET.  91 

of  the  world.  Belief  is  great,  live-giving.  The  history 
of  a  nation  becomes  fruitful,  soul-elevating,  great,  so 
soon  as  it  believes.  These  Arabs,  the  man  Mahomet 
and  that  one  century — it  is  not  as  if  a  spark  had  fallen, 
one  spark,  on  a  world  of  what  seemed  black  unnotice- 
able  sand  ;  but  lo,  the  sand  proves  explosive  powder, 
blazes  heaven-high  from  Delhi  to  Grenada !  I  said, 
the  great  man  was  always  as  lightening  out  of  heaven 
the  rest  of  men  waited  for  him  like  fuel  and  then 
they  too  would  flame. 


LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 


LECTUKE  III  * 

THE  HEKO  AS  POET — DANTE — SHAKESPEAKE. 

THE  HERO  as  divinity,  the  hero  as  prophet,  are  pro- 
ductions of  old  ages ;  not  to  be  repeated  in  the  new. 
They  presuppose  a  certain  rudeness  of  conception, 
which  the  progress  of  mere  scientific  knowledge  puts 
an  end  to.  There  needs  to  be,  as  it  were,  a  world 
vacant,  or  almost  vacant  of  scientific  forms,  if  men  in 
their  loving  wonder  are  to  fancy  their  fellow-man 
either  a  god  or  one  speaking  with  the  voice  of  a  god. 
Divinity  and  prophet  are  past.  We  are  now  to  see 
our  hero  in  the  less  ambitious,  but  also  less  question- 
able, character  of  poet ;  a  character  which  does  not 
pass.  The  poet  is  a  heroic  figure  belonging  to  all  ages  ; 
whom  all  ages  possess,  when  once  he  is  produced, 
whom  the  newest  age  as  the  oldest  may  produce — and 
will  produce,  always  when  nature  pleases.  Let  nature 
send  a  hero-soul ;  in  no  age  is  it  other  than  possible 
that  he  may  be  shaped  into  a  poet. 

Hero,  prophet,  poet — many  different  names,  in  dif- 
ferent times  and  places,  do  we  give  to  great  men ;  ac- 
cording to  varieties  we  note  in  them,  according  to  the 
sphere  in  which  they  have  displayed  themselves !  We 
might  give  many  more  names,  on  this  same  principle. 
I  will  remark  again,  however,  as  a  fact  not  unimpor- 
tant to  be  understood,  that  the  different  sphere  consti- 

*Delivered  Tuesday,  May  12,  1840. 


THK  HERO  AS  POET.  93 

tutes  the  grand  origin  of  such  distinction;  that  the 
hero  can  be  poet,  prophet,  king,  priest  or  what  you 
will,  according  to  the  kind  of  world  he  finds  himself 
born  into.  I  confess,  I  have  no  notion  of  a  truly  great 
man  that  could  not  be  all  sorts  of  men.  The  poet  who 
could  merely  sit  on  a  chair  and  compose  stanzas,  would 
never  make  a  stanza  worth  much.  He  could  not  sing 
the  heroic  warrior,  unless  he  himself  were  at  least  a 
heroic  warrior  too.  I  fancy  there  is  in  him  the  poli- 
tician, the  thinker,  legislator,  philosopher — in  one  or 
the  other  degree,  he  could  have  been,  he  is  all  these. 
So  too  I  cannot  understand  how  a  Mirabeau,  with 
that  great  glowing  heart,  with  the  fire  that  was  in  it, 
with  the  bursting  tears  that  were  in  it,  could  not  have 
written  verses,  tragedies,  poems  and  touched  all  hearts 
in  that  way,  had  his  course  of  life  and  education  led 
him  thitherward.  The  grand  fundamental  character 
is  that  of  great  man  ;  that  the  man  be  great.  Napo- 
leon has  words  in  him  which  are  like  Austerlitz  battles. 
Louis  XIV's  marshals  are*  a  kind  of  poetical  men 
withal ;  the  things  Turenne  says  are  full  of  sagacity 
and  geniality,  like  sayings  of  Samuel  Johnson.  The 
great  heart,  the  clear  deep-seeing  eye :  there  it  lies ; 
no  man  whatever,  in  what  province  soever,  can  pros- 
per at  all  withoujt  these.  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio  did 
diplomatic  messages,  it  seems,  quite  well :  one  can 
easily  believe  it ;  they  had  done  things  a  little  harder 
than  these  !  Burns,  a  gifted  song-writer  might  have 
made  a  still  better  Mirabeau.  Shakespeare  —  one 
knows  not  what  he  could  not  have  made,  in  the 
supreme  degree. 

True,  there  are  aptitudes  of  nature  too.  Nature  does 
not  make  all  great  men,  more  than  all  other  men,  in 
the  self-same  mold.  Varieties  of  aptitude  doubtless ; 


94  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

but  infinitely  more  of  circumstance  ;  and  far  oftenest 
it  is  the  latter  only  that  are  looked  to.  But  it  is  as 
with  common  men  in  the  learning  of  trades.  You  take 
any  man,  as  yet  a  vague  capability  of  a  man,  who 
could  be  any  kind  of  craftsman  ;  and  make  him  into  a 
smith,  a  carpenter,  a  mason :  he  is  then  and  thence- 
forth that  and  nothing  else.  And  if,  as  Addison  com- 
plains, you  sometimes  see  a  street-porter  staggering 
under  his  load  on  spindle-shanks  and  near  at  hand  a 
tailor  with  the  frame  of  a  Samson  handling  a  bit  of 
cloth  and  small  Whitechapel  needle — it  cannot  be  con- 
sidered that  aptitude  of  nature  alone  has  been  con- 
sulted here  either  !  The  great  man  also,  to  what  shall 
he  be  bound  apprentice  ?  Given  your  hero,  is  he  to 
become  conqueror,  king,  philosopher,  poet  ?  It  is  an 
inexplicable  complex  controversial  calculation  between 
the  world  and  him !  He  will  read  the  world  and  its 
laws :  the  world  with  its  laws  will  be  there  to  be  read. 
What  the  world,  on  this  matter,  shall  permit  and 
bid  is,  as  we  said,  the  most  important  fact  about  the 
world. 

Poet  and  prophet  differ  greatly  in  our  loose  modern 
notions  of  them.  In  some  old  languages,  again,  the 
titles  are  synonymous ;  votes  means  both  prophet  and 
poet ;  and  indeed  at  all  times,  prophet  and  poet,  well 
understood,  have  much  kindred  of  meaning.  Funda- 
mentally indeed  they  are  still  the  same ;  in  this  most 
important  respect  especially,  that  they  have  penetrated 
both  of  them  into  the  sacred  mystery  of  the  universe ; 
what  Goethe  calls  "  the  open  secret."  "  Which  is  the 
great  secret  ?"  asks  one.  "  The  open  secret " — open  to 
all,  seen  by  almost  none  !  That  divine  mystery,  which 
lies  everywhere  in  all  beings,  "  the  divine  idea  of  the 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  95 

world,  that  which  lies  at  "  the  bottom  of  appearance," 
as  Fichte  styles  it;  of  which  all  appearance,  from  the 
starry  sky  to  the  grass  of  the  field,  but  especially  the 
appearance  of  man  and  his  work,  is  but  the  vesture,  the 
embodiment  that  renders  it  visible.  This  divine  mys- 
tery is  in  all  times  and  in  all  places  ;  veritably  is.  In 
most  times  and  places  it  is  greatly  overlooked  ;  and 
the  universe  definable  always  in  one  or  the  other  dia- 
lect, as  the  realized  thought  of  God,  is  considered  a 
trivial,  inert,  commonplace  matter — as  if,  says  the 
satirist,  it  were  a  dead  thing,  which  some  upholsterer 
had  put  together  !  It  could  do  no  good,  at  present,  to 
speak  much  about  this ;  but  it  is  a  pity  for  every  one 
of  us  if  we  do  not  know  it,  live  ever  in  the  knowledge 
of  it.  Really  a  most  mournful  pity — a  failure  to  live  at 
all,  if  we  live  otherwise  ! 

But  now,  I  say,  whoever  may  forget  this  divine 
mystery,  the  vates,  whether  prophet  or  poet,  has  pene- 
trated into  it ;  is  a  man  sent  hither  to  make  it  more 
impressively  known  to  us.  That  always  is  his  message  ; 
he  is  to  reveal  that  to  us — that  sacred  mystery  which 
he  more  than  others  lives  ever  present  with.  While 
others  forget  it,  he  knows  it — I  might  say,  he  has  been 
driven  to  know  it ;  without  consent  asked  of  him,  he 
finds  himself  living  in  it,  bound  to  live  in  it.  Once 
more,  hear  is  no  hearsay,  but  a  direct  insight  and  be- 
lief; this  man  too  could  not  help  being  a  sincere 
man!  Whosoever  may  live  in  the  shows  of  things, 
it  is  for  him  a  necessity  of  nature  to  live  in 
the  very  fact  of  things.  A  man  once  more,  in  earnest 
with  the  universe,  though  all  others  were  but  toying 
with  it.  He  is  a  vates,  first  of  all,  in  virtue  of  being 
sincere.  So  far  poet  and  prophet,  participators  in  the 
"  open  secret,"  are  one. 


96  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

With  respect  to  their  distinction  again:  the  vates 
prophet,  we  might  say,  has  seized  that  sacred  mystery 
rather  on  the  moral  side,  as  good  and  evil,  duty  and 
prohibition  ;  the  vates  poet  on  what  the  Germans  call 
the  a3sthetic  side,  as  beautiful,  and  the  like.  The  one 
I  we  may  call  a  revealer  of  what  we  are  to  do,  the  other 
lof  what  we  are  to  love.  But  indeed  these  two  provin- 
ces run  into  one  another,  and  cannot  be  disjoined.  The 
prophet  too  has  his  eye  on  what  we  are  to  love  :  how 
else  shall  he  know  what  it  is  we  are  to  do  ?  The  high- 
est voice  ever  heard  on  this  earth  said  withal :  "Consider 
the  lilies  of  the  field ;  they  toil  not,  neither  do  they 
spin :  yet  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed 
like  one  of  these."  A  glance,  that,  into  the  deepest 
deep  of  beauty.  "  The  lilies  of  the  field  " — dressed 
finer  than  earthly  princes,  springing  up  there  in  the 
humble  furrow-field;  a  beautiful  eye  looking  out  on 
you,  from  the  great  inner  sea  of  beauty !  How  could 
the  rude  earth  make  these,  if  her  essence,  rugged  as 
she  looks  and  is,  were  not  inwardly  beauty  ?  In  this 
point  of  view,  too,  a  saying  of  Goethe's,  which  has 
staggered  several,  may  have  meaning :  "  The  beautiful," 
he  intimates,  "  is  higher  than  the  good  ;  the  beautiful 
includes  in  it  "  the  good."  The  true  beautiful ;  which 
however,  I  have  said  somewhere,  "  differs  from  the 
false  as  heaven  does  from  Yauxhall !  "  So  much  for 
the  distinction  and  identity  of  poet  and  prophet. 

In  ancient  and  also  in  modern  periods  we  find  a  few 
poets  who  are  accounted  perfect ;  whom  it  were  a  kind 
of  treason  to  find  fault  with.  This  is  noteworthy  ; 
this  is  right :  yet  in  strictness  it  is  only  an  illusion. 
At  bottom,  clearly  enough,  there  is  no  perfect  poet! 
A  vein  of  poetry  exists  in  the  hearts  of  all  men  ; 
no  man  is  made  altogether  of  poetry.  We  are  all 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  97 

poets  when  we  read  a  poem  well.  The  "  imagination 
that  shudders  at  the  hell  of  Dante,"  is  not  that  the 
same  faculty,  weaker  in  degree,  as  Dante's  own  ?  No 
one  but  Shakespeare  can  embody,  out  of  Saxo  Gram- 
maticus,  the  story  of  "  Hamlet  "  as  Shakespeare  did  : 
but  every  one  models  some  kind  of  story  out  of  it ; 
every  one  embodies  it  better  or  worse.  We  need  not 
spend  time  in  defining.  Where  there  is  no  specific 
difference,  as  between  round  and  square,  all  defin- 
ition must  be  more  or  less  arbitary.  A  man  that  has 
so  much  more  of  the  poetic  element  developed  in  him 
as  to  have  become  noticeable,  will  be  called  poet  by  his 
neighbors.  World  poets  too,  those  whom  we  are  to 
take  for  perfect  poets,  are  settled  by  critics  in  the  same 
way.  One  who  rises  so  far  above  the  general  level  of 
poets  will,  to  such  and  such  critics,  seem  a  universal 
poet ;  as  he  ought  to  do.  And  }^et  it  is  and  must  be, 
an  arbitrary  distinction.  All  poets,  all  men,  have  some 
touches  of  the  universal ;  no  man  is  wholly  made  of 
that.  Most  poets  are  very  soon  forgotten  :  but  not 
the  noblest  Shakespeare  or  Homer  of  them  can  be 
remembered  forever — a  day  comes  when  he  too  is 
not ! 

Nevertheless,  you  will  say,  there  must  be  a  differ- 
ence between  true  poetry  and  true  speech  not  poetical : 
what  is  the  difference  ?  On  this  point  many  things 
have  been  written,  especially  by  late  German  critics, 
some  of  which  are  not  very  intelligible  at  first.  They 
say,  for  example,  that  the  poet  has  an  infinitude  in 
him  ;  communicates  an  unendlichkeit,  a  certain  char- 
acter of  "infinitude,"  to  whatsoever  he  delineates. 
This,  though  not  very  precise,  yet  on  so  vague  a  matter 
is  worth  remembering  :  if  well  meditated,  some  mean- 
ing will  gradually  be  found  in  it.  For  my  own  part,  \ 


98  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

find  considerable  meaning  in  the  old  vulgar  distinction 
of  poetry  being  metrical,  having  music  in  it,  being  a 
song.  Truly,  if  pressed  to  give  a  definition,  one  might 
say  this  as  soon  as  anything  else  :  If  your  delineation 
be  authentically  musical,  musical  not  in  word  only,  but 
in  heart  and  substance,  in  all  the  thoughts  and  utter- 
ances of  it,  in  the  whole  conception  of  it,  then  it  will 
be  poetical ;  if  not,  not.  Musical :  how  much  lies  in 
that!  A.  musical  thought  is  one  spoken  by  a  mind 
that  has  penetrated  into  the  inmost  heart  of  the  thing ; 
detected  the  inmost  mystery  of  it,  namely  the  melody 
that  lies  hidden  in  it;  the  inward  harmony  of  coher- 
ence which  is  its  soul,  whereby  it  exists  and  has  a  right 
to  be,  here  in  this  world.  All  inmost  things,  we  may 
say,  are  melodious;  naturally  utter  themselves  in  song. 
The  meaning  of  song  goes  deep.  Who  is  there  that, 
in  logical  words,  can  express  the  effect  music  has  on 
us  ?  A  kind  of  inarticulate  unfathomable  speech,  which 
leads  us  to  the  edge  of  the  infinite  and  lets  us  for 
moments  gaze  into  that ! 

Nay  all  speech,  even  the  commonest  speech,  has 
something  of  song  in  it :  not  a  parish  in  the  world  but 
has  its  parish  accent — the  rhythm  or  tune  to  which  the 
people  there  sing  what  they  have  to  say !  Accent  is  a 
kind  of  chanting ;  all  men  have  accent  of  their  own — 
though  they  only  notice  that  of  others.  Observe  too 
how  all  passionate  language  does  of  itself  become 
musical — with  a  finer  music  than  the  mere  accent ; 
the  speech  of  a  man  even  in  zealous  anger  becomes  a 
chant,  a  song.  All  deep  things  are  song.  It  seems 
somehow  the  very  central  essence  of  us,  song ;  as  if  all 
the  rest  were  but  wrappages  and  hulls !  The  primal 
element  of  us  ;  of  us  and  of  all  things.  The  Greeks 
fabled  of  sphere-harmonies :  it  was  the  feeling  they  had 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  99 

of  the  inner  structure  of  nature ;  that  the  soul  of  all 
her  voices  and  utterances  was  perfect  music.  Poetry, 
therefore,  we  will  call  musical  thought.  The  poet  is  he 
who  thinks  in  that  manner.  At  bottom,  it  turns  still 
on  power  of  intellect ;  it  is  a  man's  sincerity  and  depth 
of  vision  that  makes  him  a  poet.  See  deep  enough 
and  you  see  musically ;  the  heart  of  nature  leing 
everywhere  music,  if  you  can  only  reach  it. 

The  votes  poet,  with  his  melodious  apocalypse  of 
nature,  seems  to  hold  a  poor  rank  among  us,  in  com- 
parison with  the  votes  prophet ;  his  function  and  our 
esteem  of  him  for  his  function,  alike  slight.  The  hero 
taken  as  divinity  ;  the  hero  taken  as  prophet ;  then 
next  the  hero  taken  only  as  poet :  does  it  not  look  as 
if  our  estimate  of  the  great  man,  epoch  after  epoch, 
were  continually  diminishing  ?  We  take  him  first  for 
a  god,  then  for  one  god-inspired  ;  and  now  in  the  next 
stage  of  it,  his  most  miraculous  word  gains  from  us 
only  the  recognition  that  he  is  a  poet,  beautiful  verse- 
maker,  man  of  genius,  or  such-like  !  It  looks  so  ;  but 
I  persuade  myself  that  intrinsically  it  is  not  so.  If 
we  consider  well,  it  will  perhaps  appear  that  in  man 
still  there  is  the  same  altogether  peculiar  admiration 
for  the  heroic  gift,  by  what  name  soever  called,  that 
there  at  any  time  was. 

I  should  say,  if  we  do  not  now  reckon  a  great  man 
literally  divine,  it  is  that  our  notions  of  God,  of  the 
supreme  unattainable  fountain  of  splendor,  wisdom  and 
heroism,  are  ever  rising  higher  /  not  altogether  that 
our  reverence  for  these  qualties,  as  manifested  in  our 
like,  is  getting  lower.  This  is  worth  taking  thought 
of.  Skeptical  dilettantism,  the  curse  of  these  ages,  a 
curse  which  will  last  forever,  does  indeed  in  this  the 
highest  province  of  human  things,  as  in  all  provinces, 


100  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

make  sad  work ;  and  our  reverence  for  great  men,  all 
crippled,  blinded,  paralytic  as  it  is,  comes  out  in  poor 
plight,  hardly  recognizable.  Men  worship  the  shows 
of  great  men  ;  the  most  disbelieve  that  there  is  any 
reality  of  great  men  to  worship.  The  dreariest,  fatal- 
est  faith  ;  believing  which,  one  would  literally  despair 
of  human  things.  Nevertheless  look,  for  example,  at 
Napoleon  !  A  Corsican  lieutenant  of  artillery ;  that  is 
the  show  of  liim:  yet  is  he  not  obeyed,  worshiped  after 
his  sort,  as  all  the  tiaraed  and  diademed  of  the  world 
put  together  could  not  be  ?  High  duchesses,  and  ostlers 
of  inns,  gather  round  the  Scottish  rustic,  Burns — a 
strange  feeling  dwelling  in  each  that  they  never  heard 
a  man  like  this ;  that,  on  the  whole,  this  is  the  man  ! 
In  the  secret  heart  of  these  people  it  still  dimly  reveals 
itself,  though  there  is  no  accredited  way  of  uttering  it 
at  present,  that  this  rustic,  with  his  black  brows  and 
flashing  sun-eyes,  and  strange  words  moving  laughter 
and  tears,  is  of  a  dignity  far  beyond  all  others,  incom- 
mensurable with  all  others.  Do  not  we  feel  it  so? 
But  now,  were  dilettantism,  skepticism,  triviality,  and 
all  that  sorrowful  brood,  cast  out  of  us — as,  by  God's 
blessing,  they  shall  one  day  be  ;  were  faith  in  the  shows 
of  things  entirely  swept  out,  replaced  by  clear  faith  in 
the  things  so  that  a  man  acted  on  the  impulse  of  that 
only,  and  counted  the  other  non-extant ;  what  a  new 
livelier  feeling  toward  this  Burns  were  it ! 

Nay  here  in  these  ages,  such  as  they  are,  have  we 
not  two  mere  poets,  if  not  deified,  yet  we  may  say  beat- 
ified ?  Shakespeare  and  Dante  are  saints  of  poetry  ; 
really,  if  we  will  think  of  it,  canonized,  so  that  it  is 
impiety  to  meddle  with  them.  The  unguided  instinct 
of  the  world,  working  across  all  these  perverse  impedi- 
ments, has  arrived  at  such  result,  Dante  and  Shakes, 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  101 

peare  are  a  peculiar  two.  They  dwell  apart,  in  a  kind 
of  royal  solitude ;  none  equal,  none  second  to  them  :  in 
the  general  feeling  of  the  world,  a  certain  transcend- 
entalism, a  glory  as  of  complete  perfection,  invests 
these  two.  They  are  canonized,  through  no  pope  or 
cardinals  took  hand  in  doing  it!  Such,  in  spite  of 
every  perverting  influence,  in  the  most  unheroic  times, 
is  still  our  indestructible  reverence  for  heroism.  We 
will  look  a  little  at  these  two,  the  poet  Dante  and  the 
poet  Shakespeare  :  what  little  it  is  permitted  us  to  say 
here  of  the  hero  as  poet  will  most  fitly  arrange  itself 
in  that  fashion. 

Many  volumes  have  been  written  by  way  of  com- 
mentary on  Dante  and  his  book ;  yet,  on  the  whole, 
with  no  great  result.  His  biography  is,  as  it  were, 
irrecoverably  lost  for  us.  An  unimportant,  wandering, 
sorrow -stricken  man,  not  much  note  was  taken  of  him 
while  he  lived ;  and  the  most  of  that  has  vanished,  in 
the  long  space  that  now  intervenes.  It  is  five  centuries 
since  he  ceased  writing  and  living  here.  After  all 
commentaries,  the  book  itself  is  mainly  what  we  know 
of  him.  The  book — and  one  might  add  that  portrait 
commonly  attributed  to  Giotto,  which,  looking  on  it, 
you  cannot  help  inclining  to  think  genuine,  whoever 
did  it.  To  me  it  is  a  most  touching  face  ;  perhaps  of 
all  faces  that  I  know,  the  most  so.  Lonely  there, 
painted  as  on  vacancy,  with  the  simple  laural  wound 
round  it ;  the  deathless  sorrow  and  pain,  the  known 
victory  which  is  also  deathless— significant  of  the  whole 
history  of  Dante !  I  think  it  is  the  mournfulest  face 
that  ever  was  painted  from  reality  ;  an  altogether 
tragic,  heart-affecting  face.  There  is  in  it,  as  founda- 
tion of  it,  the  softness,  tenderness,  gentle  affection  as 


103  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

of  a  child ;  but  all  this  is  as  if  congealed  into  sharp 
contradiction,  into  abnegation,  isolation,  proud  hopeless 
pain.  A  soft  ethereal  soul  looking  out  so  stern,  im- 
placable, grim-trenchant,  as  from  imprisonment  of 
thick  ribbed  ice !  Withal  it  is  a  silent  pain  too,  a  silent 
scornful  one :  the  lip  is  curled  in  a  kind  of  godlike  dis- 
dain of  the  thing  that  is  eating  out  his  heart — as  if  it 
were  withal  a  mean  insignificant  thing,  as  if  he  whom 
/t  had  power  to  torture  and  strangle  were  greater  than 
it.  The  face  of  one  wholly  in  protest,  and  life-long 
unsurrendering  battle,  against  the  world.  Affection 
all  converted  into  indignation :  an  implacable  indig- 
nation :  slow,  equable,  silent,  like  that  of  a  god ! 
The  eye  too,  it  looks  out :  in  a  kind  of  surprise,  a 
kind  of  inquiry,  why  the  world  was  of  such  a 
sort  ?  This  is  Dante :  so  he  looks,  this  "  voice  of  ten 
silent  centuries,"  and  sings  us  "  his  mystic  unfathom- 
able song." 

The  little  that  we  know  of  Dante's  life  corresponds 
well  enough  with  this  portrait  and  this  book.  He  was 
born  at  Florence,  in  the  upper  class  of  society,  in  the 
year  1265.  His  education  was  the  best  then  going; 
much  school  divinity,  Aristotelean  logic,  some  Latin 
classics — no  inconsiderable  insight  into  certain  prov- 
inces of  things :  and  Dante,  with  his  earnest  intelligent 
nature,  we  need  not  doubt,  learned  better  than  most 
all  that  was  learnable.  He  has  a  clear  cultivated 
understanding  and  of  great  subtlety  ;  this  best  fruit  of 
education  he  had  contrived  to  realize  from  these  scho- 
lastics. He  knows  accurately  and  well  what  lies  close 
to  him;  but,  in  such  a  time,  without  printed  books  or 
free  intercourse,  he  could  not  know  well  what  was  dis- 
tant: the  small  clear  light,  most  luminous  for  what  is 
near,  breaks  itself  into  singular  chiaroscuro  striking  on 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  103 

what  is  far  off.  This  was  Dante's  learning  from  the 
schools.  In  life,  he  had  gone  through  the  usual  des- 
tinies ;  been  twice  out  campaigning  as  a  soldier  for  the 
Forentine  state,  been  on  embassy ;  had  in  his  thirty- 
fifth  year,  by  natural  gradation  of  talent  and  service, 
become  one  of  the  chief  magistrates  of  Florence.  He 
had  met  in  boyhood  a  certain  Beatrice  Portinari,  a 
beautiful  little  girl  of  his  own  age  and  rank  and  grown- 
up thenceforth  in  partial  sight  of  her,  in  some  distant 
intercourse  with  her.  All  readers  know  his  graceful 
affecting  account  of  this;  and  then  of  their  being 
parted ;  of  her  being  wedded  to  another  and  of  her 
death  soon  after.  She  makes  a  great  figure  in  Dante's 
poem  ;  seems  to  have  made  a  great  figure  in  his  life. 
Of  all  beings  it  might  seem  as  if  she,  held  apart  from 
him,  far  apart  at  last  in  the  dim  eternity,  were  the  only 
one  he  had  ever  with  his  whole  strength  of  affection 
loved.  She  died  :  Dante  himself  was  wedded ;  but  it 
seems  not  happily,  far  from  happily.  I  fancy,  the  rig- 
orous earnest  man,  with  his  keen  excitabilities,  was  not 
altogether  easy  to  make  happy. 

We  will  not  complain  of  Dante's  miseries :  had  all 
gone  right  with  him  as  he  wished  it,  he  might  have 
been  prior,  podesta,  or  whatsoever  they  call  it,  of 
Florence,  well  excepted  among  neighbors — and  the 
world  had  wanted  one  of  the  most  notable  words  ever 
spoken  or  sung.  Florence  would  have  had  another 
prosperous  lord  mayor ;  and  the  ten  dumb  centuries 
continued  voiceless  and  the  ten  other  listening  centu- 
ries (for  there  will  be  ten  of  them  and  more)  had  no 
"  Divina  Commedia  "to  hear !  "We  will  complain  of  noth- 
ing. A  nobler  destiny  was  appointed  for  this  Dante ; 
and  he,  struggling  like  a  man  led  toward  death  and 
crucifixion,  could  not  help  fulfilling  it.  Give  him  the 


104  LECTURES  ON  UEROE8. 

choice  of  his  happiness!  He  knew  not,  more  than 
we  do,  what  was  really  happy,  what  was  really 
miserable. 

In  Dante's  priorship,  the  Guelf-Ghibelline,  Bianchi- 
Neri,  or  some  other  confused  disturbances  rose  to  such 
a  height,  that  Dante,  whose  party  had  seemed  the 
stronger,  was  with  his  friends  cast  unexpectedly  forth 
into  banishment ;  doomed  thenceforth  to  a  life  of  woe 
and  wandering.  His  property  was  all  confiscated  and 
more  ;  he  had  the  fiercest  feeling  that  it  was  entirely 
unjust,  nefarious  in  the  sight  of  God  and  man.  He 
tried  what  was  in  him  to  get  reinstated  ;  tried  even  by 
warlike  surprisal  with  arms  in  his  hand  :  but  it  would 
not  do';  bad  only  had  become  worse.  There  is  a  record, 
I  believe,  still  extant  in  the  Florence  archives,  dooming 
this  Dante,  wheresoever  caught,  to  be  burned  alive. 
Burned  alive ;  so  it  stands,  they  say :  a  very  curious 
civic  document.  Another  curious  document,  some  con- 
siderable number  of  years  later,  is  a  letter  of  Dante's 
to  the  Florentine  magistrates,  written  in  answer  to  a 
milder  proposal  of  theirs,  that  he  should  return  on 
condition  of  apologizing  and  paying  a  fine.  He 
answers,  with  fixed  stern  pride :  "  If  1  cannot  return 
without  calling  myself  guilty,  I  will  never  return, 
nunquam  revertar." 

For  Dante  there  was  now  no  home  in  this  world.  He 
wandered  from  patron  to  patron,  from  place  to  place  ; 
proving,  in  his  own  bitter  words,  "  How  hard  is  the 
path,  Come  e  duro  calle"  The  wretched  are  not 
cheerful  company.  Dante,  poor  and  banished,  with 
his  proud  earnest  nature,  with  his  moody  humors,  was 
not  a  man  to  conciliate  men.  Petrarch  reports  of  him 
that  being  at  Can  della  Scala's  court  and  blamed  one 
day  for  bis  gloom  and  taciturnity,  he  answered  in  no 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  105 

courtier-like  way.  Delia  Scala  stood  among  his  cour- 
tiers, with  mimes  and  buffoons  (nebulones  ac  histriones) 
making  him  heartily  merry  ;  when  turning  to  Dante, 
he  said :  "  Is  it  not  strange,  now,  that  this  poor  fool 
should  make  himself  so  entertaining  ;  while  you,  a  wise 
man,  sit  there  day  after  day,  and  have  nothing  to  amuse 
us  with  at  all  ?"  Dante  answered  bitterly  :  "  No,  not 
strange;  your  highness  is  to  recollect  the  proverb, 
like  to  like" — given  the  amuser,  the  amusee  must  also 
be  given !  Such  a  man,  with  his  proud  silent  ways 
with  his  sarcasms  and  sorrows,  was  not  made  to  suc- 
ceed at  court.  By  degrees,  it  came  to  be  evident  to 
him  that  he  had  no  longer  any  resting-place,  or 
hope  of  benefit,  in  this  earth.  The  earthly  world 
had  cast  him  forth,  to  wander,  wander;  no  living 
heart  to  love  him  now ;  for  his  sore  miseries  there  was 
no  solace  here. 

The  deeper  naturally  would  the  eternal  world  im- 
press itself  on  him  ;  that  awful  reality  over  which, 
after  all,  this  time- world,  with  its  Florences  and  banish- 
ments, only  flutters  as  an  unreal  shadow.  Florence 
thou  shall  never  see :  but  hell  and  purgatory  and  hea- 
ven thou  shall  surely  see  !  What  is  Florence,  Can  della 
Scala,  and  the  world  and  life  altogether  ?  ETERNITY  : 
thither,  of  a  truth,  not  elsewhither,  art  thou  and  all 
things  bound  !  The  great  soul  of  Dante,  homeless  on 
earth,  made  its  home  more  and  more  in  that  awful 
other  world.  Naturally  his  thoughts  brooded  on  that, 
as  on  the  one  fact  important  for  him.  Bodied  or  bodi- 
less, it  is  the  one  fact  important  for  all  men — but  to 
Dante,  in  that  age,  it  was  bodied  in  fixed  certainty  of 
scientific  shape  ;  he  no  more  doubted  of  the  Malebolge 
pool,  that  it  all  lay  there  with  its  gloomy  circles,  with 
its  alti  guai,  and  that  he  himself  should  see  it,  then  we 


106  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

doubt  that  we  should  see  Constantinople  if  we  went 

thither.     Dante's  heart,  long  filled  with  this,  brooding 

over  it  in  speechless  thought  and  awe,  bursts  forth  at 

^ngth  into  "mystic  unfathomable  song ;"  and  this  his 

Divine  Comedy,"  the  most  remarkable  of  all  modern 
oooks,  is  the  result. 

It  must  have  been  a  great  solacement  to  Dante,  and 
was,  as  we  can  see,  a  proud  thought  for  him  at  times, 
that  he,  here  in  exile,  could  do  this  work ;  that  no 
Florence,  nor  no  man  or  men,  could  hinder  him  from 
doing  it,  or  even  much  help  him  in  doing  it.  He  knew 
too,  partly,  that  it  was  great ;  the  greatest  a  man  could 
do.  "  If  thou  follow  thy  star,$?  tu  segui  tua  stella  "— 
so  could  the  hero,  in  his  forsakenness,  in  his  extreme 
need,  still  say  to  himself  :  "  Follow  thou  thy  star,  thou 
shalt  not  fail  of  a  glorious  heaven !  "  The  labor  of 
writing,  we  find,  and  indeed  could  know  otherwise, 
was  great  and  painful  for  him ;  he  says,  this  book, 
"  which  has  made  me  lean  for  many  years."  Ah  yes, 
it  was  won,  all  of  it,  with  pain  and  sore  toil — not  in 
sport,  but  in  grim  earnest.  His  book,  as  indeed  most  good 
books  are,  has  been  written,  in  many  senses,  with  his 
heart's  blood.  It  is  his  whole  history,  this  book.  He 
died  after  finishing  it ;  not  yet  very  old,  at  the  age 
of  fifty-six — broken-hearted  rather,  as  is  said.  He 
lies  buried  in  his  death-city  Kavenna:  Ilic  claudor 
Dantes  patriis  extorris  ab  oris.  The  Florentines 
begged  back  his  body,  in  a  century  after  ;  the  Ravenna 
people  would  not  give  it.  "  Here  am  I  Dante  laid, 
shut  out  from  my  native  shores." 

I  said,  Dante's  poem  was  a  song :  it  is  Tieck  who 
calls  it  "  a  mystic  unfathomable  song ; "  and  such  is 
literally  the  character  of  it.  Coleridge  remarks  very 
pertinently  somewhere,  that  wherever  you  find  a  sen- 


THE  BEttO  AS  POET.  107 

tence  musically  worded,  of  true  rhythm  and  melody 
in  the  words,  there  is  something  deep  and  good  in  the 
meaning  too.  For  body  and  soul,  word  and  idea,  go 
strangely  together  here  as  everywhere.  Song:  we 
said  before,  it  was  the  heroic  of  speech !  All  old 
poems,  Homer's  and  the  rest,  are  authentically  songs. 
I  would  say,  in  strictness,  that  all  right  poems  are ; 
that  whatsoever  is  not  sung  is  properly  no  poem,  but  a 
piece  of  prose  cramped  into  jingling  lines — to  the  great 
injury  of  the  grammar,  to  the  great  grief  of  the  reader, 
for  most  part !  What  we  want  to  get  at  is  the  thought 
the  man  had,  if  he  had  any :  why  should  he  twist  it 
into  jingle,  if  he  could  speak  it  out  plainly  ?  It  is  only 
when  the  heart  of  him  is  rapt  into  true  passion  of  mel- 
ody, and  the  very  tones  of  him,  according  to  Coleridge's 
remark,  become  musical  by  the  greatness,  depth  and 
music  of  his  thoughts,  that  we  can  give  him  right  to  rhyme 
and  sing ;  that  we  call  him  a  poet,  and  listen  to  him  as 
the  heroic  of  speakers — whose  speech  is  song.  Preten- 
ders to  this  are  many ;  and  to  an  earnest  reader,  I 
doubt,  it  is  for  the  most  part  a  very  melancholy,  not 
to  say  an  insupportable  business,  that  of  reading  rhyme ! 
Khyme  that  had  no  inward  necessity  to  be  rhymed 
— it  ought  to  have  told  us  plainly,  without  any  jingle, 
what  it  was  aiming  at.  I  would  advise  all  men  who 
can  speak  their  thought,  not  to  sing  it ;  to  understand  ; 
that,  in  a  serious  time,  among  serious  men,  there  is  no 
vocation  in  them  for  singing  it.  Precisely  as  we  love 
the  true  song,  and  are  charmed  by  it  as  by  something 
divine,  so  shall  we  hate  the  false  song,  and  account  it 
a  mere  wooden  noise,  a  thing  hollow,  superfluous,  alto- 
gether an  insincere  and  offensive  thing. 

I  give  Dante  my  highest  praise  when  I  say  of  his 
"  Divine  Comedy  "  that  it  is,  in  all  senses,  genuinely  a 


108  LECTURES  ON 

song.  In  the  very  sound  of  it  there  is  a  canto  fermo  • 
it  proceeds  as  by  a  chant.  The  language,  his  simple 
terza  rima,  doubtless  helped  him  in  this.  One  reads 
along  naturally  with  a  sort  of  lilt.  But  I  add,  that  it 
could  not  be  otherwise  ;  for  the  essence  and  material 
of  the  work  are  themselves  rhythmic.  Its  depth  and 
rapt  passion  and  sincerit\%  makes  it  musical — go  deep 
enough,  there  is  music  everywhere.  A  true  inward 
symmetry,  what  one  calls  an  architectural  harmony, 
reigns  in  it,  proportionates  it  all :  architectural ;  which 
also  partakes  of  the  character  of  music.  The  three 
kingdoms,  inferno,  purgatorio,  paradiso,  look  out  on 
one  another  like  compartments  of  a  great  edifice ;  a 
great  supernatural  world-cathedral,  piled  up  there, 
stern,  solemn,  awful ;  Dante's  world  of  souls!  It  is,  at 
bottom,  the  sincerest  of  all  poems ;  sincerity,  here  too, 
we  find  to  be  the  measure  of  worth.  It  came  deep  out 
of  the  author's  heart  of  hearts  ;  and  it  goes  deep  and 
through  long  generations,  into  ours.  The  people  of 
Verona,  when  they  saw  him  on  the  streets,  used  to 
say,  "  Eccovi  V  uom  cK  e  stato  aW  inferno,  See,  there 
is  the  man  that  was  in  hell ! ?'  Ah  yes,  he  had  been  in 
hell — in  hell  enough,  in  long  severe  sorrow  and  strug- 
gle ;  as  the  like  of  him  is  pretty  sure  to  have  been. 
Commedias  that  come  out  divine  are  not  accomplished 
otherwise.  Thought,  true  labor  of  any  kind,  highest 
virtue  itself,  is  it  not  the  daughter  of  pain  ?  Born  as 
out  of  the  black  whirlwind — true  effort,  in  fact,  as  of  a 
captive  struggling  to  free  himself:  that  is  thought. 
In  all  ways  we  are  "  to  become  perfect  through  suffer- 
ing" But  as  I  say,  no  work  known  to  me  is  so  elab- 
orated as  this  of  Dante's.  It  has  all  been  as  if  molten, 
in  the  hottest  furnace  of  his  soul.  It  had  made  him 
"lean"  for  many  years.  Not  the  general  whole  only  ; 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  109 

every  compartment  of  it  is  worked  out,  with  intense 
earnestness,  into  truth,  into  clear  visuality.  Each  an- 
swers to  the  other ;  each  fits  in  its  place,  like  a  marble 
stone  accurately  hewn  and  polished.  It  is  the  soul  of 
Dante,  and  in  this  the  soul  of  the  middle  ages,  ren- 
dered forever  rhythmically  visible  there.  No  light 
task ;  a  right  intense  one  :  but  a  task  which  is  done. 

Perhaps  one  would  say,  intensity,  with  the  much 
that  depends  on  it,  is  the  prevailing  character  of 
Dante's  genius.  Dante  does  not  come  before  us  as  a 
large  catholic  mind ;  rather  as  a  narrow  and  even 
sectarian  mind :  it  is  partly  the  fruit  of  his  age  and 
position,  but  partly  too  of  his  own  nature.  His  great- 
ness has,  in  all  senses,  concentered  itself  into  fiery  ejn- 
phasis  and  depth.  He  is  world-great  not  because  he  is 
world-wide,  but  because  he  is  world-deep.  Through  J 
all  objects  he  pierces  as  it  were  down  into  the  heart  of 
being.  I  know  nothing  so  intense  as  Dante.  Consider, 
for  example,  to  begin  with  the  outermost  development 
of  his  intensity,  consider  how  he  paints.  He  has  a 
great  power  of  vision  ;  seizes  the  very  type  of  a  thing; 
presents  that  and  nothing  more.  You  remember  that 
first  view  he  gets  of  the  Hall  of  Dite :  red  pinnacle, 
red-hot  cone  of  iron  glow  ing  through  the  dim  immensity 
of  gloom — so  vivid,  so  distinct,  visible  at  once  and  for-  . 
ever !  It  is  as  an  emblem  of  the  whole  genius  of 
Dante.  There  is  a  brevity,  an  abrupt  precision  in  him  : 
Tacitus  is  not  briefer,  more  condensed  ;  and  then  in 
Dante  it  seems  a  natural  condensation,  spontaneous  to 
the  man.  One  smiting  word  ;  and  then  there  is  silence, 
nothing  more  said.  His  silence  is  more  eloquent  than 
words.  It  is  strange  with  what  a  sharp  decisive  grace 
he  snatches  the  true  likeness  of  a  matter :  cuts  into 
the  matter  as  with  a  pen  of  fire.  Plutus,  the  blustering 


110  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

giant,  collapses  at  Virgil's  rebuke  ;  it  is  "  as  the  sails 
sink,  the  mast  being  suddenly  broken."  Or  that  poor 
Brunetto  Latini,  with  the  cotto  aspetto,  " face  baked" 
parched  brown  and  lean  ;  and  the  "fiery  snow"  that 
falls  on  them  there,  a  "  fiery  snow  without  wind,"  slow, 
deliberate,  never-ending  !  Or  the  lids  of  those  tombs  ; 
square  sarcophaguses,  in  that  silent  dim-burning  hall, 
each  with  its  soul  in  torment ;  the  lids  laid  open  there ; 
they  are  to  be  shut  at  the  day  of  judgement,  through 
eternity.  And  how  Farinata  rises ;  and  how  Caval- 
cante  falls — at  hearing  of  his  son  and  the  past  tense 
"fue  !  "  The  very  movements  in  Dante  have  some- 
thing brief ;  swift,  decisive,  almost  military.  It  is  of 
the  inmost  essence  of  his  genius  this  sort  of  painting. 
The  fiery,  swift  Italian  nature  of  the  man,  so  silent, 
passionate,  with  its  quick  abrupt  movements,  its  silent 
"pale  rages,"  speaks  itself  in  these  things. 

For  though  this  of  painting  is  one  of  the  outermost 
developments  of  a  man,  it  comes  like  all  else  from  the 
essential  faculty  of  him ;  it  is  physiognomical  of  the 
whole  man.  Find  a  man  whose  words  paint  you  a 
likeness,  you  have  found  a  man  worth  something ; 
mark  his  manner  of  doing  it,  as  very  characteristic  of 
him.  In  the  first  place,  he  would  not  have  discerned 
the  object  at  all,  or  seen  the  vital  type  of  it,  unless  he 
had,  what  we  may  call,  sympathized  with  it — had  sym- 
pathy in  him  to  bestow  on  objects.  He  must  have 
been  sincere  about  it  too  ;  sincere  and  sympathetic :  a 
man  without  worth  cannot  give  you  the  likeness  of  any 
object;  he  dwells  in  vague  outwardness,  fallacy  and 
trivial  hearsay,  about  all  objects.  And  indeed  may  we 
not  say  that  intellect  altogether  expresses  itself  in  this 
power  of  discerning  what  an  object  is?  Whatsoever 
of  faculty  a  man's  mind  may  have  will  come  out  here. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  HI 

Is  it  even  of  business,  a  matter  to  be  done  ?  The  gifted 
man  is  he  who  sees  the  essential  point,  and  leaves  all 
the  rest  aside  as  surplusage  :  it  is  his  faculty  too,  the 
man  of  business'  faculty,  that  he  discern  the  true 
likeness,  not  the  false  superficial  one,  of  the  thing  he 
has  got  to  work  in.  And  how  much  of  morality  is  in 
the  kind  of  insight  we  get  of  anything ;  "  the  eye 
seeing  in  all  things  what  it  brought  with  it  the  faculty 
of  seeing !  "  To  the  mean  eye  all  things  are  trivial,  as 
certainly  as  to  the  jaundiced  they  are  yellow.  Raph- 
ael, the  painter  tell  us,  is  the  best  of  all  portrait-paint- 
ers withal.  No  most  gifted  eye  can  exhaust  the 
significance  of  any  object.  In  the  commonest  human 
face  there  lies  more  than  Raphael  will  take  away  with 
him. 

Dante's  painting  is  not  graphic  only,  brief,  true,  and 
of  a  vividness  as  of  fire  in  dark  night ;  taken  on  the 
wider  scale,  it  is  everywhere  noble,  and  the  outcome 
of  a  great  soul.  Francesca  and  her  lover,  what  quali- 
ties in  that !  A  thing  woven  as  out  of  rainbows,  on  a 
ground  of  eternal  black.  A  small  flute-voice  of  infinite 
wail  speaks  there,  into  our  very  heart  of  hearts.  A 
touch  of  womanhood  in  it  too  :  delta  bella  persona  die 
mifu  tolta;  and  how,  even  in  the  pit  of  woe,  it  is  a 
solace  that  he  will  never  part  from  her !  Saddest  trag- 
edy in  these  alii  guai.  And  the  racking  winds,  in  that 
aer  oruno,  whirl  them  away  again,  to  wail  forever ! 
Strange  to  think :  Dante  was  the  friend  of  this  poor 
Francesca's  father;  Francesca  herself  may  have  sat 
upon  the  poet's  knee,  as  a  bright  innocent  little  child. 
Infinite  pity,  yet  also  infinite  rigor  of  law :  it  is  so 
nature  is  made  ;  it  is  so  Dante  discerned  that  she  was 
made.  What  a  paltry  notion  is  that  of  his  "  Divine 
Comedy's  "  being  a  poor  splenetic  impotent  terrestrial 


112  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

libel;  putting  those  into  hell  whom  he  could  not  be 
avenged  upon  on  earth  !  I  suppose  if  ever  pity,  tender 
as  a  mother's,  was  in  the  heart  of  any  man,  it  was  in 
Dante's.  But  a  man  who  does  not  know  rigor  cannot 
pity  either.  His  very  pity  will  be  cowardly,  egoistic — 
sentimentality,  or  little  better.  I  know  not  in  the 
world  an  affection  equal  to  that  of  Dante.  It  is  a  ten- 
derness, a  trembling,  longing,  pitying  love :  like  the 
wail  of  ^Eolean  harps,  soft,  soft ;  like  a  child's  young 
heart — and  then  that  stern,  sore-saddened  heart !  These 
longings  of  his  toward  his  Beatrice  ;  their  meeting  to- 
gether in  the  paradisoj  his  gazing  in  her  pure  trans- 
figured eyes,  her  that  had  been  purified  by  death  so 
lohg,  separated  from  him  so  far — one  likens  it  to  the 
song  of  angles ;  it  is  among  the  purest  utterances  of 
affection,  perhaps  the  very  purest,  that  ever  came  out 
of  a  human  soul. 

For  the  intense  Dante  is  intense  in  all  things ;  he 
has  got  into  the  essence  of  all.  His  intellectual  insight 
as  painter,  on  occasion  too  as  reasoner,  is  but  the  result 
of  all  other  sorts  of  intensity.  Morally  great,  above 
all,  we  must  call  him  :  it  is  the  beginning  of  all.  His 
scorn,  his  grief  are  as  transcendent  as  his  love — as  in- 
deed, what  are  they  but  the  inverse  or  converse  of  his 
love !  "A  dio  spiacenti  ed  #'  nemici  sui,  hateful  to 
God  and  to  the  enemies  of  Grod : "  lofty  scorn,  un- 
appeasable silent  reprobation  and  aversion  ;  "Non  ra- 
yionam  di  lor,  we  will  not  speak  of  them,  look  only  and 
pass."  Or  think  of  this  :  u  They  have  not  the  Jiope  to 
die,  non  han  speranza  dimorte"  One  day,  it  had  risen 
sternly  benign  on  the  scathed  heart  of  Dante,  that  he, 
wretched,  never  resting,  worn  as  he  was,  would  full 
surely  die;  "that  destiny  itself  could  not  doom  him 
not  to  die."  Such  works  are  in  this  man.  For  rigor, 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  1]3 

earnestness  and  depth,  he  is  not  to  be  paralleled  in  the 
modern  world ;  to  seek  his  parallel  we  must  go  into 
the  Hebrew  Bible,  and  live  with  the  antique  prophets 
there. 

I  do  not  agree  with  much  modern  criticism,  in 
greatly  prefering  the  inferno  to  the  two  other  parts  of 
the  "Divina  Commedia."  Such  preference  belongs,  I 
imagine,  to  our  general  By  ronism  of  taste  and  is  like  to 
be  a  transient  feeling.  The  purgatorio  and  paradiso, 
especially  the  former,  one  would  almost  say,  is  even 
more  excellent  than  it.  It  is  a  noble  thing  ihskpurya- 
torio,  "  mountain  of  purification  ;  "  an  emblem  of  the 
noblest  conception  of  that  age.  If  sin  is  so  fatal  and 
hell  is  and  must  be  so  rigorous,  awful,  yet  in  repentance 
too  is  man  purified  ;  repentance  is  the  grand  Christian 
act.  It  is  beautiful  how  Dante  works  it  out.  The 
tremolar  deW  onde,  that  "  trembling "  of  the  ocean- 
waves,  under  the  first  pure  gleam  of  morning,  dawning 
afar  on  the  wandering  two,  is  as  the  type  of  an  altered 
mood.  Hope  has  now  dawned ;  never-dying  hope,  if 
in  company  still  with  heavy  sorrow.  The  obscure  so- 
journ of  demons  and  reprobate  is  underfoot ;  a  soft 
breathing  of  penitence  mounts  higher  and  higher,  to 
the  throne  of  mercy  itself.  "  Pray  for  me,"  the  deni- 
zens of  that  mount  of  pain  all  say  to  him.  "  Tell  my 
Giovanna  to  pray  for  me,"  my  daughter  Giovanna;  u  I 
think  her  mother  loves  me  no  more ! "  They  toil  pain- 
fully up  by  that  winding  steep,  "  bent  down  like  cor- 
bels of  a  building,"  some  of  them — crushed  together  so 
"for  the  sin  of  pride;"  yet  nevertheless  in  years,  in 
ages  and  aeons,  they  shall  have  reached  the  top,  which 
is  heaven's  gate  and  by  mercy  shall  have  been  admitted 
in.  The  joy  too  of  all,  when  one  has  prevailed ;  the 
whole  mountain  shakes  with  joy  and  a  psalm  of  praise 


114   *  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

rises,  when  one  soul  has  perfected  repentance  and  got 
its  sin  and  misery  left  behind  !  I  call  all  this  a  noble 
embodiment  of  a  true  noble  thought. 

But  indeed  the  three  compartments  mutually  sup- 
port one  another,  are  indispensable  to  one  another. 
The  paradiso,  a  kind  of  inarticulate  music  to  me,  is  the 
redeeming  side  of  the  inferno  ;  the  inferno  without  it 
were  untrue.  All  three  make  up  the  true  unseen  world, 
as  figured  in  the  Christianity  of  the  middle  ages ;  a 
thing  forever  memorable,  forever  true  in  the  essence  of 
it,  to  all  men.  It  was  perhaps  delineated  in  no  human 
soul  with  such  depth  of  veracity  as  in  this  of  Dante's ; 
a  man  sent  to  sing  it,  to  keep  it  long  memorable.  Very 
notable  with  what  brief  simplicity  he  passes  out  of  the 
every-day  reality,  into  the  invisible  one ;  and  in  the 
second  or  third  stanza,  we  find  ourselves  in  the  world 
of  spirits ;  and  dwell  there,  as  among  things  palpable, 
indubitable !  To  Dante  they  were  so  ;  the  real  world, 
as  it  i«  called  and  its  facts,  was  but  the  threshold  to  an 
infinitely  higher  fact  of  a  world.  At  bottom,  the  one 
was  as  preternatural  as  the  other.  Has  not  each  man 
a  soul  ?  He  will  not  only  be  a  spirit,  but  is  one.  To 
the  earnest  Dante  it  is  all  one  visible  fact ;  he  believes 
it,  sees  it ;  is  the  poet  of  it  in  virtue  of  that.  Sincerity, 
I  say  again,  is  the  saving  merit,  now  as  always. 

Dante's  hell,  purgatory,  paradise,  are  a  symbol 
withal,  an  emblematic  representation  of  his  belief 
about  this  universe — some  critic  in  a  future  age,  like 
those  Scandinavian  ones  the  other  day,  who  had  ceased 
altogether  to  think  as  Dante  did,  may  find  this  too  all 
an  "  allegory,"  perhaps  an  idle  allegory  !  It  is  a  sub- 
lime embodiment,  or  sublimest,  of  the  soul  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  expresses,  as  in  huge  world- wide  architect- 
ural emblems,  how  the  Christian  Dante  felt  good  and 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  115 

evil  to  be  the  two  polar  elements  of  this  creation,  on 
which  it  all  turns  ;  that  these  two  differ  not  by  prefer- 
ability  of  one  to  the  other,  but  by  incompatibility  ab- 
solute and  infinite ;  that  the  one  is  excellent  and  high 
as  light  and  heaven,  the  other  hideous,  black  as  Gehen- 
na and  the  pit  of  hell !  Everlasting  justice,  yet  with 
penitence,  with  everlasting  pity — all  Christianism,  as 
Dante  and  the  middle  ages  had  it,  is  emblemed  here. 
Emblemed :  and  yet,  as  I  urged  the  other  day,  with 
what  entire  truth  of  purpose  ;  how  unconscious  of  any 
embleming !  Hell,  purgatory,  paradise  :  these  things 
were  not  fashioned  as  emblems ;  was  there,  in  our 
modern  European  mind,  any  thought  at  all  of  their 
being  emblems!  Were  they  not  indubitable  awful 
facts ;  the  whole  heart  of  man  taking  them  for  practi- 
cally true,  all  nature  everywhere  confirming  them  ? 
So  is  it  always  in  these  things.  Men  do  not  believe  an 
allegory.  The  future  critic,  whatever  his  new  thought 
may  be,  who  considers  this  of  Dante  to  have  been  all 
got  up  as  an  allegory,  will  commit  one  sore  mistake ! 
Paganism  we  recognised  as  a  veracious  expression  of 
the  earnest  awe-struck  feeling  of  man  toward  the  uni- 
verse ;  veracious,  true  once,  and  still  not  without  worth 
for  us.  But  mark  here  the  difference  of  paganism  and 
Christianism;  one  great  difference.  Paganism  em- 
blemed chiefly  the  operations  of  nature  ;  the  destinies, 
efforts,  combinations,  vicissitudes  of  things  and  men  in 
this  world  ;  Christianism  emblemed  the  law  of  human 
duty,  the  moral  law  of  man.  One  was  the  sensuous 
nature  :  a  rude  helpless  utterance  of  the  first  thought 
of  men — the  chief  recognized  virtue,  courage,  superi- 
ority to  fear.  The  other  was  not  for  the  sensuous  nat- 
ure, but  for  the  moral.  What  a  progress  is  here,  if  in 
that  one  respect  only  ! 


116  L  KCTUH  ES  ON  IIKRO  KS. 

And  so  in  this  Dante,  as  we  said,  had  ten  silent  cent- 
uries, in  a  very  strange  way,  found  a  voice.  The 
"Divina  Comraedia "  is  of  Dante's  writing;  yet  in 
truth  it  belongs  to  ten  Christian  centuries,  only  the 
finishing  of  it  is  Dante's.  So  always.  The  craftsman 
there,  the  smith  with  that  metal  of  his,  with  these  tools, 
with  these  cunning  methods — how  little  of  all  he  does 
is  properly  his  work!  All  past  inventive  men  work 
there  with  him — as  indeed  with  all  of  us,  in  all  things. 
Dante  is  the  spokesman  of  the  middle  ages;  the 
thought  they  lived  by  stands  here,  in  everlasting  music. 
These  sublime  ideas  of  his,  terrible  and  beautiful,  are 
the  fruit  of  the  Christian  meditation  of  all  the  good 
men  who  had  gone  before  him.  Precious  they ; 
but  also  is  not  he  precious  ?  Much,  had  not  he 
spoken,  would  have  been  dumb ;  not  dead,  yet  living 
voiceless. 

On  the  whole,  is  it  not  an  utterance,  this  mystic 
song,  at  once  of  one  of  the  greatest  human  souls,  and 
of  the  highest  thing  that  Europe  had  hitherto  realized 
for  itself?  Christianism,  as  Dante  sings  it,  is  another 
than  paganism  in  the  rude  Norse  mind  ;  another  than 
"  bastard  Christianism  "  half-articulately  spoken  in  the 
Arab  desert  seven  hundred  years  before  !  The  noblest 
idea  made  real  hitherto  among  men,  is  sung,  and  em- 
blemed-forth  abidingly,  by  one  of  the  noblest  men.  In 
the  one  sense  and  in  the  other,  are  we  not  right  glad 
to  possess  it  ?  As  I  calculate,  it  may  last  yet  for  long 
thousands  of  years.  For  the  thing  that  is  uttered  from 
the  inmost  parts  of  a  man's  soul,  differs  altogether 
from  what  is  uttered  by  the  outer  part.  The  outer  is 
of  the  day,  under  the  empire  of  mode ;  the  outer  passes 
away,  in  swift  endless  changes  ;  the  inmost  is  the  same 
yesterday,  to-day  and  forever,  True  souls,  in  all  gen- 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  117 

erations  of  the  world,  who  look  on  this  Dante,  will 
find  a  brotherhood  in  him  ;  the  deep  sincerity  of  his 
thoughts,  his  woes  and  hopes,  will  speak  likewise  to 
their  sincerity  ;  they  will  feel  that  this  Dante  too  was 
a  brother.  Napoleon  in  Saint  Helena  is  charmed  with 
the  genial  veracity  of  old  Homer.  The  oldest  Hebrew 
prophet,  under  a  vesture  the  most  diverse  from  ours, 
does  yet,  because  he  speaks  from  the  heart  of  man, 
speak  to  all  men's  hearts.  It  is  the  one  sole  secret  of 
continuing  long  memorable.  Dante  for  depth  of  sin- 
cerity, is  like  an  antique  prophet  too ;  his  words,  like 
theirs,  come  from  his  very  heart.  One  need  not  won- 
der if  it  were  predicted  that  his  poem  might  be  the 
•most  enduring  thing  our  Europe  has  yet  made;  for 
nothing  so  endures  as  a  truly  spoken  word.  All  cathe- 
drals, pontificalities,  brass  and  stone,  and  outer  arrange- 
ment never  so  lasting,  are  brief  in  comparison  to  an 
unfathomable  heart-song  like  this :  one  feels  as  if  it 
might  survive,  still  of  importance  to  men,  when  these 
had  all  sunk  into  new  irrecognizable  combinations,  and 
had  ceased  individually  to  be.  Europe  has  made  much ; 
great  cities,  great  empires,  encyclopaedias,  creeds, 
bodies  of  opinion  and  practice:  but  it  has  made  little 
of  the  class  of  Dante's  thought.  Homer  yet  is,  verit- 
ably present  face  to  face  with  every  open  soul  of  us ; 
and  Greece,  where  is  it  f  Desolate  for  thousands  of 
years ;  away,  vanished ;  a  bewildered  heap  of  stones 
and  rubbish,  the  life  and  existence  of  it  all  gone.  Like 
a  dream  ;  like  the  dust  of  King  Agamemnon  !  Greece 
was  ;  Greece,  except  in  the  words  it  spoke,  is  not. 

The  uses  of  this  Dante?  We  will  not  say  much 
about  his  "  uses."  A  human  soul  who  has  once  got 
into  that  primal  element  of  song,  and  sung-forth  fitly 
somewhat  therefrom,  has  worked  in  the  depths  of  our 


118  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

existence;  feeding  through  long  times  the  \\te-root8  of 
all  excellent  human  things  whatsoever — in  a  way  that 
"  utilities  "  will  not  succeed  well  in  calculating !  We 
will  not  estimate  the  sun  by  the  quantity  of  gas-light 
it  saves  us ;  Dante  shall  be  invaluable,  or  of  no  value. 
One  remark  I  may  make :  the  contrast  in  this  respect 
between  the  hero  poet  and  the  hero  prophet.  In  a 
hundred  years,  Mahomet,  as  we  saw,  had  his  Arabians 
at  Grenada  and  at  Delhi ;  Dante's  Italians  seem  to  be 
yet  very  much  where  they  were.  Shall  we  say,  then, 
Dante's  effect  on  the  world  was  small  in  comparison  ? 
JS"ot  so  :  his  arena  is  far  more  restricted  ;  but  also  it  is 
far  nobler,  clearer — perhaps  not  less  but  more  impor- 
tant. Mahomet  speaks  to  great  masses  of  men,  in  the 
coarse  dialect  adapted  to  such  ;  a  dialect  filled  with  in- 
consistencies, crudities,  follies:  on  the  great  masses 
alone  can  he  act  and  there  with  good  and  with  evil 
strangely  blended.  Dante  speaks  with  the  noble,  the 
pure  and  great,  in  all  times  and  places.  Neither  does 
he  grow  obsolete,  as  the  other  does.  Dante  burns  as  a 
pure  star,  fixed  there  in  the  firmament,  at  which  the 
great  and  the  high  of  all  ages  kindle  themselves :  he 
is  the  possession  of  all  the  chosen  of  the  world  for 
uncounted  time.  Dante,  one  calculates,  may  long  sur- 
vive Mahomet.  In  this  way  the  balance  may  be  made 
straight  again. 

But,  at  any  rate,  it  is  not  by  what  is  called  their 
effect  on  the  world  by  what  we  can  judge  of  their  effect 
there,  that  a  man  and  his  work  are  measured.  Effect? 
Influence  ?  Utility  ?  Let  a  man  do  his  work ;  the 
fruit  of  it  is  the  care  of  another  than  he.  It  will 
grow  its  own  fruit ;  and  whether  embodied  in  caliph 
thrones  and  Arabian  conquests,  so  that  it  "fills  all 
morning  and  evening  newspapers,"  and  all  histories. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  119 

which  are  a  kind  of  distilled  newspapers ;  or  not  em- 
bodied so  at  all — what  matters  that  ?  That  is  not  the 
real  fruit  of  it !  The  Arabian  caliph,  in  so  far  only  as 
he  did  something,  was  something.  If  the  great  cause 
of  man,  and  man's  work  in  God's  earth,  got  no  further- 
ance from  the  Arabian  caliph,  then  no  matter  how 
many  scimiters  he  drew,  how  many  gold  piasters 
pocketed  and  what  uproar  and  blaring  he  made  in  this 
world — he  was  but  a  loud  sounding  inanity  and  futility  ; 
at  bottom,  he  was  not  at  all.  Let  us  honor  the  great 
empire  of  silence,  once  more  !  The  boundless  treasury 
which  we  do  not  jingle  in  our  pockets,  or  count  up  and 
present  before  men  !  It  is  perhaps,  of  all  things,  the 
usefulest  for  each  of  us  to  do,  in  these  loud  times. 

As  Dante,  the  Italian  man,  was  sent  into  our  world 
to  embody  musically  the  religion  of  the  middle  ages, 
the  religion  of  our  modern  Europe,  its  inner  life ;  so 
Shakespeare,  we  may  say,  embodies  for  us  the  outer 
life  of  our  Europe  as  developed  then,  its  chivalries, 
courtesies,  humors,  ambitions,  what  practical  way  of 
thinking,  acting,  looking  at  the  world,  men  then  had. 
As  in  Homer  we  may  still  construe  old  Greece  ;  so  in 
Shakespeare  and  Dante,  after  thousands  of  years,  what 
our  modern  Europe  was,  in  faith  and  in  practice,  will 
still  be  legible.  Dante  has  given  us  the  faith  or  soul ; 
Shakespeare,  in  a  not  less  noble  way,  has  given  us  the 
practice  or  body.  This  latter  also  we  were  to  have  ;  a 
man  was  sent  for  it,  the  man  Shakespeare.  Just  when 
that  chivalry  way  of  life  had  reached  its  last  finish  and 
was  on  the  point  of  breaking  down  into  slow  or  swift 
dissolution,  as  we  now  see  it  everywhere,  this  other 
sovereign  poet,  with  his  seeing  eye,  with  his  perennial 
singing  voice,  was  sent  to  take  note  of  it,  to  give  long- 


120  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

enduring  record   of  it.     Two  fit  men :  Dante,  deep, 

I  fierce  as  the  central  fire  of  the  world  ;  Shakespeare, 

[wide,  placid,  far-seeing,  as  the  sun,  the  upper  light  of 

•  the  world.     Italy  produced  the  one  world- voice ;  we 

English  had  the  honor  of  producing  the  other. 

Curious  enough  how,  as  it  were  by  mere  accident, 
this  man  came  to  us.  I  think  always,  so  great,  quiet, 
complete  and  self-sufficing  is  this  Shakespeare,  had  the 
Warwickshire  squire  not  prosecuted  him  for  deer-steal- 
ing, we  had  perhaps  never  heard  of  him  as  a  poet ! 
The  woods  and  skies,  the  rustic  life  of  man  in  Stratford 
there,  had  been  enough  for  this  man !  But  indeed 
that  strange  outbudding  of  our  whole  English  existence, 
which  we  call  the  Elizabethan  era,  did  not  it  too  come 
as  of  its  own  accord  ?  The  "  tree  igdrasil  "  buds  and 
withers  by  its  own  laws — too  deep  for  our  scanning. 
Yet  it  does  bud  and  wither  and  every  bough  and  leaf 
of  it  is  there,  by  fixed  eternal  laws ;  not  a  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy  but  comes  at  the  hour  fit  for  him.  Curious,  I 
say,  and  not  sufficiently  considered :  how  everything 
does  co-operate  with  all ;  not  a  leaf  rotting  on  the 
highway  but  is  indissoluble  portion  of  solar  and  stellar 
systems;  no  thought  word  or  act  of  man  but  has 
sprung  withal  out  of  all  men  and  works  sooner  or  later, 
recognizably  or  irrecognizably,  on  all  men !  It  is  all  a 
tree:  circulation  of  sap  and  influences,  mutual  com- 
munication of  every  minutest  leaf  with  the  lowest 
talon  of  a  root,  with  every  other  greatest  and  minutest 
portion  of  the  whole.  The  tree  igdrasil,  that  has  its 
roots  down  in  the  kingdoms  of  Hela  and  death  and 
whose  boughs  overspread  the  highest  heaven ! 

In  some  sense  it  may  be  said  that  this  glorious  Eliza- 
bethan era  with  its  Shakespeare,  as  the  outcome  and 
flowerage  of  all  which  had  preceded  it,  is.  itself 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  121 

utable  to  the  Catholicism  of  the  middle  ages.  The 
Christian  faith,  which  was  the  theme  of  Dante's  song, 
had  produced  this  practical  life  which  Shakespeare 
was  to  sing.  For  religion  then,  as  it  now  and  al\\7ays 
is,  was  the  soul  of  practice ;  the  primary  vital  fact  in 
men's  life.  And  remark  here,  as  rather  curious,  that 
middle  age  Catholicism  was  abolished,  so  far  as  acts  of 
parliament  could  abolish  it,  before  Shakespeare,  the 
noblest  product  of  it,  made  his  appearance.  He  did 
make  his  appearance  nevertheless.  Nature  at  her  own 
time,  with  Catholicism  or  what  else  might  be  necessary, 
sent  him  forth  ;  taking  small  thought  of  acts  of  parlia- 
ment. King  Henrys,  Queen  Elizabeths  go  their  way  ; 
and  nature  too  goes  hers.  Acts  of  parliament,  on  the 
whole,  are  small,  notwithstanding  the  noise  they  make. 
What  act  of  parliament,  debate  at  St.  Stephen's,  on 
the  hustings  or  elsewhere,  was  it  that  brought  this 
Shakespeare  into  being?  No  dining  at  Freemasons' 
tavern,  opening  subscription-lists,  selling  of  shares,  and 
infinite  other  jangling  and  true  or  false  endeavoring  ! 
This  Elizabethan  era,  and  all  its  nobleness  and  blessed- 
ness, came  without  proclamation,  preparation  of  ours. 
Priceless  Shakespeare  was  the  free  gift  of  nature ; 
given  altogether  silently — received  altogether  silently, 
as  if  it  had  been  a  thing  of  little  account.  And  yet, 
very  literally,  it  is  a  priceless  thing.  One  should  look 
at  that  side  of  matters  too. 

Of  this  Shakespeare  of  ours,  perhaps  the  opinion  one 
sometimes  hears  a  little  idolatrously  expressed  is,  in 
fact,  the  right  one  ;  I  think  the  best  judgment  not  of 
this  country  only,  but  of  Europe  at  large,  is  slowly 
pointing  to  the  conclusion,  that  Shakespeare  is  the 
chief  of  all  poets  hitherto ;  the  greatest  intellect  who, 
in  our  recorded  world,  has  left  record  of  himself  in  the 


122  LECTURES  ON  HEROttS. 

way  of  literature.  On  the  whole,  I  know  not  such  a 
power  of  vision,  such  a  faculty  of  thought,  if  we  take 
all  the  characters  of  it,  in  any  other  man.  Such  a 
calmness  of  depth ;  placid  joyous  strength  ;  all  things 
imaged  in  that  great  soul  of  his  so  true  and  clear,  as 
in  a  tranquil  unfathomable  sea !  It  has  been  said,  that 
in  the  constructing  of  Shakespeare's  dramas  there  is, 
apart  from  all  other  "faculties"  as  they  are  called,  an 
understanding  manifested,  equal  to  that  in  Bacon's 
"Novum  Organum."  That  is  true;  and  it  is  not  a 
truth  that  strikes  every  one.  It  would  become  more 
apparent  if  we  tried,  any  of  us  for  himself,  how,  out 
of  Shakespeare's  dramatic  materials,  we  could  fashion 
such  a  result !  The  built  house  seems  all  so  fit — every- 
way as  it  should  be,  as  if  it  came  there  by  its  own  law 
and  the  nature  of  things — we  forget  the  rude  disor- 
derly quarry  it  was  shaped  from.  The  very  perfection 
of  the  house,  as  if  nature  herself  had  made  it,  hides 
the  builder's  merit.  Perfect,  more  perfect  than  any 
other  man,  we  may  call  Shakespeare  in  this  :  he  dis- 
cerns, knows  as  by  instinct,  what  condition  he  works 
under,  what  his  materials  are,  what  his  own  force  and 
its  relation  to  them  is.  It  is  not  a  transitory  glance  of 
insight  that  will  suffice  ;  it  is  deliberate  illumination  of 
the  whole  matter ;  it  is  a  calmly  seeing  eye ;  a  great 
intellect,  in  short.  How  a  man,  of  some  wide  thing 
that  he  has  witnessed,  will  construct  a  narrative,  what 
kind  of  picture  and  delineation  he  will  give  of  it — is 
the  best  measure  you  could  get  of  what  intellect  is  in 
the  man.  Which  circumstance  is  vital  and  shall  stand 
prominent;  which  unessential,  fit  to  be  suppressed; 
where  is  the  true  beginning,  the  true  sequence  and 
ending?  To  find  out  this,  you  task  the  whole  force  of 
insight  that  is  in  the  man.  He  must  understand  the 


THE  HERO  AS  POET,  123 

thing ;  according  to  the  depth  of  his  understanding, 
will  the  fitness  of  his  answer  be.  You  will  try  him  so. 
Does  like  join  itself  to  like ;  does  the  spirit  of  method 
stir  in  that  confusion,  so  that  its  embroilment  becomes 
order  ?  Can  the  man  say,  fiat  lux,  let  there  be  light ; 
and  out  of  chaos  make  a  world  ?  Precisely  as  there  is 
light  in  himself,  will  he  accomplish  this. 

Or  indeed  we  may  say  again,  it  is  in  what  I  called 
portrait-painting,  delineating  of  men  and  things,  especi- 
ally of  men,  that  Shakespeare  is  great.  All  the  great- 
ness of  the  man  comes  out  decisively  here.  It  is  un- 
exampled, I  think,  that  calm  creative  perspicacity  of 
Shakespeare.  The  thing  he  looks  at  reveals  not  this 
or  that  face  of  it,  but  its  inmost  heart  and  generic 
secret :  it  dissolves  itself  as  in  light  before  him,  so  that 
he  discerns  the  perfect  structure  of  it.  Creative,  we 
said :  poetic  creation,  what  is  this  too  but  seeing  the 
thing  sufficiently?  The  word  that  will  describe  the 
thing,  follows  of  itself  from  such  clear  intense  sight  of 
the  thing.  And  is  not  Shakespeare's  morality,  his 
valor,  candor,  tolerance,  truthfulness ;  his  whole  victor- 
ious strength  and  greatness,  which  can  triumph  over 
such  obstructions,  visible  there  too?  Great  as  the 
world !  No  twisted,  poor  convex-concave  mirror,  re- 
flecting all  objects  with  its  own  convexities  and  con- 
cavities ;  a  perfectly  level  mirror — that  is  to  say  withal, 
if  we  will  understand  it,  a  man  justly  related  to  all 
things  and  men,  a  good  man.  It  is  truly  a  lordly 
spectacle  how  this  great  soul  takes  in  all  kinds  of  men 
and  objects,  a  Falstaff,  an  Othello,  a  Juliet,  a  Corio- 
lanus ;  sets  them  all  forth  to  us  in  their  round  complete- 
ness ;  loving  just,  the  equal  brother  of  all.  Novum 
(yrganum  and  all  the  intellect  you  will  find  in  Bacon, 
is  of  a  quite  secondary  order ;  earthly,  material,  poor 


124  LEGTVRK8  ON  11FAIOES. 

in  comparison  with  this.  Among  modern  men,  one 
finds,  in  strictness,  almost  nothing  of  the  same  rank. 
Goethe,  alone,  since  the  days  of  Shakespeare,  reminds, 
me  of  it.  Of  him  too  you  say  that  he  saw  the  object ; 
you  may  say  what  he  himself  says  of  Shakespeare : 
"His  characters  are  like  watches  with  dial-plates  of 
.transparent  crystal;  they  show  you  the  hour  like 
others  and  the  inward  mechanism  also  is  all  visible." 

The  seeing  eye !  It  is  this  that  discloses  the  inner 
harmony  of  things;  what  nature  meant,  what  musical 
idea  nature  has  wrapped  up  in  these  often  rough  em- 
bodiments. Something  she  did  mean.  To  the  seeing 
eye  that  something  were  discernible.  Are  they  base, 
miserable  things  ?  You  can  laugh  over  them,  you  can 
weep  over  them  ;  you  can  in  some  way  or  other  geni- 
ally relate  yourself  to  them — you  can,  at  lowest,  hold 
your  peace  about  them,  turn  away  your  own  and 
others'  face  from  them,  till  the  hour  come  for  practi- 
cally exterminating  and  extinguishing  them  !  At  bot- 
tom, it  is  the  poet's  first  gift,  as  it  is  all  men's,  that  he 
have  intellect  enough.  He  will  be  a  poet  if  he  have  : 
a  poet  in  word ;  or  failing  that,  perhaps  still  better  a 
poet  in  act.  Whether  he  write  at  all ;  and  if  so, 
whether  in  prose  or  in  verse,  will  depend  on  accidents  : 
who  knows  on  what  extremely  trivial  accidents — per- 
haps on  his  having  had  a  singing-master,  on  his  being 
taught  to  sing  in  his  boyhood !  But  the  faculty  which 
enables  him  to  discern  the  inner  heart  of  things  and 
the  harmony  that  dwells  there  (for  whatsoever  exists 
has  a  harmony  in  the  heart  of  it,  or  it  would  not  hold 
together  and  exist),  is  not  the  result  of  habits  or  ac- 
cidents, but  the  gift  of  nature  herself ;  the  primary 
outfit  for  a  heroic  man  in  what  sort  soever.  To  the 
poet,  as  to  every  other,  we  say  first  of  all,  See.  If  you 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  125 

cannot  do  that,  it  is  of  no  use  to  keep  stringing  rhymes 
together,  jingling  sensibilities  against  each  other  and 
name  yourself  a  poet ;  there  is  no  hope  for  you.  If 
you  can,  there  is,  in  prose  or  verse,  in  action  or  specu- 
lation, all  manner  of  hope,  The  crabbed  old  school- 
master used  to  ask,  when  they  brought  him  a  new 
pupil,  "  But  are  ye  sure  he's  not  a  dunce  f  "  Why, 
really  one  might  ask  the  same  thing,  in  regard  to 
every  man  proposed  for  whatsoever  function ;  and 
consider  it  as  the  one  inquiry  needful :  Are  ye  sure  he's 
not  a  dunce  ?  There  is,  in  this  world,  no  other  entirely 
fatal  person. 

For,  in  fact,  I  say  the  degree  of  vision  that  dwells 
in  a  man  is  a  correct  measure  of  the  man.  If  called  to 
define  Shakespeare's  faculty,  I  should  say  superiority 
of  intellect  and  think  I  had  included  all  under  that. 
What  indeed  are  faculties  ?  We  talk  of  faculties  as  if 
they  were  distinct,  things  separable ;  as  if  a  man  had 
intellect,  imagination,  fancy,  etc.,  as  he  has  hands,  feet 
and  arms.  That  is  a  capital  error.  Then  again,  we 
hear  of  a  man's  "  intellectual  nature,"  and  of  his 
"moral  nature,"  as  if  these  again  were  divisible  and 
existed  apart.  Necessities  of  language  do  perhaps 
prescribe  such  forms  of  utterance  ;  we  must  speak,  I 
am  aware  in  that  way,  if  we  are  to  speak  at  all.  But 
words  ought  not  to  harden  into  things  for  us.  It 
seems  tome,  our  apprehension  of  this  matter  is,  for 
most  part,  radically  falsified  thereby.  We  ought  to 
know  withal  and  to  keep  forever  in  mind,  that  these 
divisions  are  at  bottom  but  names  ;  that  man's  spirit- 
ual nature,  the  vital  force  which  dwells  in  him,  is  es-/ 
sentially  one  and  indivisible;  that  what  we  call  imag- 
ination, fancy,  understanding  and  so  forth,  are  but! 
different  figures  of  the  same  power  of  insight,  all  in- 


12G  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

dissolubly  connected  with  each  other,  physiognomically 
related  ;  that  if  we  knew  one  of  them,  we  might  know 
all  of  them.  Morality  itself,  what  we  call  the  moral 
quality  of  a  man,  what  is  this  but  another  side  of  the 
one  vital  force  whereby  he  is  and  works  ?  All  that  a 
man  does  is  physiognomical  of  him.  You  may  see  how 
a  man  would  fight,  by  the  way  in  which  he  sings  ;  his 
courage,  or  want  of  courage,  is  visible  in  the  word  he 
utters,  in  the  opinion  he  has  formed,  no  less  than  in 
the  stroke  he  strikes.  He  is  one ;  and  preaches  the 
same  self  abroad  in  all  these  ways. 

"Without  hands  a  man  might  have  feet,  and  could  still 
walk :  but,  consider  it — without,  morality  intellect  were 
impossible  for  him;  a  thoroughly  immoral  man  could  not 
know  anything  at  all !  To  know  a  thing,  what  we  can  call 
knowing,  a  man  must  first  love  the  thing,  sympathize 
with  it;  that  is,  be  virtuously  related  to  it.  If  he  have 
not  the  justice  to  put  down  his  own  selfishness  at  every 
turn,  the  courage  to  stand  by  the  dangerous-true  at  every 
turn,  how  shall  he  know  ?  His  virtues,  all  of  them, 
f  will  lie  recorded  in  his  knowledge.  Nature,  with  her 
truth,  remains  to  the  bad,  to  the  selfish  and  the  pu- 
sillanimous forever  a  sealed  book :  what  such  can  know 
of  nature  is  mean,  superficial,  small ;  for  uses  of  the 
day  merely.  But  does  not  the  very  fox  know  some- 
thing of  nature  ?  Exactly  so :  it  knows  where  the 
geese  lodge!  The  human  reynard,  very  frequent  every- 
where in  the  world,  what  more  does  he  know  but  this 
and  the  like  of  this?  Nay,  it  should  be  considered  too, 
that  if  the  fox  had  not  a  certain  vulpine  morality,  he 
could  not  even  know  where  the  geese  were,  or  get  at 
the  geese !  If  he  spent  his  time  in  splenetic  atrabiliar 
reflections  on  his  own  misery,  his  ill  usage  by  nature, 
fortune  and  other  foxes  and  so  forth;  and  had  not 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  127 

courage,  promptitude,  practicality,  and  other  suitable 
vulpine  gifts  and  graces,  he  would  catch  no  geese.  We 
may  say  of  the  fox  too,  that  his  moral  ity  and  insight  are 
of  the  same  dimensions ;  different  faces  of  the  same  in- 
ternal unity  of  vulpine  life!  These  things  are  worth 
stating ;  for  the  contrary  of  them  acts  with  manifold 
very  baleful  perversion,  in  this  time :  wfcat  limitations, 
modifications  they  require,  your  own  candor  will  sup- 

piy- 

If  I  say,  therefore,  that  Shakespeare  is  the  greatest 
of  intellects,  I  have  said  all  concerning  him.  But  there 
is  more  in  Shakespeare's  intellect  than  we  have  yet  seen. 
It  is  what  I  call  an  unconscious  intellect;  there  is  more 
virtue  in  it  than  he  himself  is  aware  of.  Novalis  beau- 
tifully remarks  of  him,  that  those  dramas  of  his  are 
products  of  nature  too,  deep  as  nature  herself.  I  find 
a  great  truth  in  this  saying.  Shakespeare's  art  is  not 
artifice ;  the  noblest  worth  of  it  is  not  there  by  plan  or 
precontrivance.  It  grows  up  from  the  deeps  of  natureT" 
through  this  noble  sincere  soul,  who  is  a  voice  of  nature. 
The  latest  generations  of  men  will  find  new  meanings 
"new  harmonies  with  the  infinite  structure  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  concurrences  with  later  ideas,  affinities  with  the 
higher  powers  and  senses  of  man."  This  well  deserves 
meditating.  It  is  nature's  highest  reward  to  a  true  simple 
great  soul,  that  he  get  thus  to  be  a  part  of  herself. 
Such  a  man's  works,  whatsoever  he  with  utmost  con- 
scious exertion  and  forethought  shall  accomplish,  grow 
up  withal  ^consciously,  from  the  unknown  deeps  in  him 
— as  the  oak  tree  grows  from  the  earth's  bosom,  as  the 
mountains  and  waters  shape  themselves ;  with  a  sym- 
metry grounded  on  nature's  own  laws,  conformable  to 
all  truth  whatsoever.  How  much  in  Shakespeare  lies 
hid ;  his  sorrows,  his  silent  struggles  known  to  himself; 


128  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

much  that  was  not  known  at  all,  not  speakable  at  all; 
like  roots,  like  sap  and  forces  working  underground ! 
Speech  is  great ;  but  silence  is  greater. 

Withal  the  joyful  tranquility  of  this  man  is  notable. 
I  will  not  blame  Dante  for  his  misery :  it  is  as  battle 
without  victory  ;  but  true  battle — the  first  indispensa- 
ble thing.  Yet  I  call  Shakespeare  greater  than  Dante, 
in  that  he  fought  truly,  and  did  conquer.  Doubt  it 
not,  he  had  his  own  sorrows :  those  sonnets  of  his  will 
even  testify  expressly  in  what  deep  waters  he  had 
waded,  and  swum  struggling  for  his  life — as  what  man 
like  him  ever  failed  to  have  to  do  ?  It  seems  to  me  a 
heedless  notion,  our  common  one  that  he  sat  like  a  bird 
on  the  bough ;  and  sang  forth,  free  and  off-hand ;  never 
knowing  the  troubles  of  other  men.  Not  so ;  with  no 
man  is  it  so.  How  could  a  man  travel  forward  from 
rustic  deer-poaching  to  such  tragedy- writ  ing,  and  not 
fall  in  with  sorrows  by  the  way  ?  Or,  still  better,  how 
could  a  man  delineate  a  Hamlet,  a  Coriolanus,  a  Mac- 
beth, so  many  suffering  heroic  hearts,  if  his  own  heroic 
heart  had  never  suffered  ?  And  now,  in  contrast  with 
all  this,  observe  his  mirthfulness,  his  genuine  overflow- 
ing love  of  laughter !  You  would  say,  in  no  point  does 
he  exaggerate  but  only  in  laughter.  Fiery  objurgations, 
words  that  pierce  and  burn,  are  to  be  found  in  Shakes- 
pear  ;  yet  he  is  always  in  measure  here ;  never  what 
Johnson  would  remark  as  a  specially  "good  hater." 
But  his  laughter  seems  to  pour  from  him  in  floods; 
he  heaps  all  manner  of  ridiculous  nicknames  on  the  butt 
he  is  bantering,  tumbles  and  tosses  him  in  all  sorts  of 
horse-play ;  would  you  say,  with  his  whole  heart  laughs. 
And  then,  if  not  always  the  finest,  it  is  always  a  geni- 
al laughter.  Not  at  mere  weakness,  at  misery  or 
poverty;  never.  No  man  who  can  laugh,  what  we  call 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  129 

laughing,  will  laugh  at  these  things.  It  is  some  poor 
character  only  desiring  to  laugh,  and  have  the  credit 
of  wit,  that  does  so.  Laughter  means  sympathy ;  good 
laughter  is  not  "  the  crackling  of  thorns  under  the  pot." 
Even  at  stupidity  and  pretension  this  Shakespeare  does 
not  laugh  otherwise  than  genially.  Dogberry  and 
Verges  tickle  our  very  hearts ;  and  we  dismiss  them 
covered  with  explosions  of  laughter:  but  we  like  the 
poor  fellows  only  the  better  for  our  laughing :  and  hope 
they  will  get  on  well  there,  and  continue  presidents  of 
the  city-watch.  Such  laughter,  like  sunshine  on  the 
deep  sea,  is  very  beautiful  to  me. 

"We  have  no  room  to  speak  of  Shakespeare's  individual 
works ;  though  perhaps  there  is  much  still  waiting  to 
be  said  on  that  head.  Had  we,  for  instance,  all  his 
plays  reviewed  as  Hamlet  in  "  Wilhelm  Meister,"  is !  A 
thing  which  might,  one  day,  be  done.  August  Wil- 
helm Schlegel  has  a  remark  on  his  historical  plays, 
"  Henry  V,"  and  others,  which  is  worth  remembering. 
He  calls  them  a  kind  of  national  epic.  Marl  borough, 
you  recollect,  said  he  knew  no  English  history  but  what 
he  had  learned  from  Shakespeare.  There  are  really, 
if  we  look  to  it,  few  as  memorable  histories.  The 
great  salient  points  are  admirably  seized ;  all  rounds 
itself  off,  into  a  kind  of  rhythmic  coherence ;  it  is,  as 
Schlegel  says,  epic;  as  indeed  all  delineation  by  a  great 
thinker  will  be.  There  are  right  beautiful  things  in  those 
pieces,  which  indeed  together  form  one  beautiful 
thing.  That  battle  of  Agincourt  strikes  me  as  one  of 
the  most  perfect  things,  in  its  sort,  we  anywhere  have 
of  Shakespeare's.  The  description  of  the  hosts:  the 
worn-out,  jaded  English ;  the  dread  hour,  big  with 
destiny,  when  the  battle  shall  begin;  and  then  that 


130  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

deathless  valor:  "Ye  good  yeomen  whose  limbs 
were  made  in  England ! "  There  is  a  noble  patriotism 
in  it — far  other  than  the  "indifference"  you  some- 
times hear  ascribed  to  Shakespeare.  A  true  English 
heart  breathes,  calm  and  strong,  through  the  whole 
business ;  not  boisterous,  protrusive ;  all  the  better  for 
that.  There  is  a  sound  in  it  like  the  ring  of  steel.  This 
man  too  had  a  right  stroke  in  him,  had  it  come  to  that ! 
But  I  \vill  say,  of  Shakespeare's  works  generally, 
that  we  have  no  full  impress  of  him  there;  even  as  full 
as  we  have  of  many  men.  His  works  are  so  many 
windows,  through  which  we  see  a  glimpse  of  the 
world  that  was  in  him.  All  his  works  seem,  com- 
paratively speaking,  cursory,  imperfect,  written  under 
cramping  circumstances ;  giving  only  here  and  there  a 
note  of  the  full  utterance  of  the  man.  Passages  there 
are  that  come  upon  you  like  splendor  out  of  heaven  ; 
bursts  of  radiance,  illuminating  the  very  heart  of  the 
thing :  you  say,  "  There  is  true,  spoken  once  and  forever ; 
wheresoever  and  whensoever  there  is  an  open  human 
soul,  that  will  be  recognized  as  true!  Such  bursts, 
however,  make  us  feel  that  the  surrounding  matter  is 
not  radiant ;  that  it  is,  in  part,  temporary,  conventional. 
Alas,  Shakespeare  had  to  write  for  the  Globe  play- 
house: his  great  soul  had  to  crush  itself,  as  it  could, 
into  that  and  no  other  mould.  It  was  with  him,  then, 
as  it  is  with  us  all.  No  man  works  save  under  condi- 
tions. The  sculptor  cannot  set  his  own  free  thought  be- 
fore us ;  but  his  thought  as  he  could  translate  it  into  the 
stone  that  was  given,  with  the  tools  that  were  given. 
Disjecta  membra  are  all  that  we  find  of  any  poet,  or  of 
any  man. 

Whoever   looks  intelligently   at   this  Shakespeare 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  131 

may  recognize  that  he  too  was  a  Prophet  in  his  way ;  of 
an  insight  analogous  to  the  prophet,  though  he  took 
it  up  in  another  strain.  Nature  seemed  to  this  man  al- 
so divine ;  unspeakable,  deep  as  tophet,  high  as  heaven  : 
"  We  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of ! "  That 
scroll  in  Westminster  Abbey,  which  few  read  with 
understanding,  is  of  the  depth  of  any  seen.  But  the 
man  sang;  did  not  preach,  except  musically.  We 
called  Dante  the  melodious  priest  of  middle-age  Cathol- 
icism. May  we  not  call  Shakespeare  the  still  more 
melodious  priest  of  a  true  Catholicism,  the  "  universal 
church  "of  the  future  and  of  all  times?  No  narrow 
superstition,  harsh  asceticism,  intolerance,  fanatical 
fierceness  or  perversion  :  a  revelation  so  far  as  it  goes, 
that  such  a  thousandfold  hidden  beauty  and  divineness 
dwells  in  all  nature ;  which  let  all  men  worship  as 
they  can !  We  may  say  without  offense,  that  there 
rises  a  kind  of  universal  psalm  out  of  this  Shakespeare 
too;  not  unfit  to  make  itself  heard  among  the  still 
more  sacred  psalms.  Not  in  disharmony  with  these,  if 
we  understood  them,  but  in  harmony !  I  cannot  call  this 
Shakespeare  a  "  skeptic,"  as  some  do ;  his  indifference 
to  creeds  and  theological  quarrels  of  his  time  mislead- 
ing them.  No :  neither  unpatriotic,  though  he  says 
little  about  his  patriotism ;  nor  skeptic,  though  he  says 
little  about  his  faith.  Such  "indifference"  was  the 
fruit  of  his  greatness  withal :  his  whole  heart  was  in 
his  own  grand  sphere  of  worship  (we  may  call  it  such); 
these  other  controversies,  vitally  important  to  other 
men,  were  not  vital  to  him. 

But  call  it  worship,  call  it  what  you  will,  is  it  not  a 
right  glorious  thing,  and  set  of  things,  this  that  Shakes- 
peare, has  brought  us?  For  myself,  I  feel  that  there 
is  actually  a  kind  of  sacredness  in  the  fact  of  such  a 


132  LECTURES  ON  HEROES 

man  sent  into  this  earth.  Is  he  not  an  eye  to  us  all; 
a  blessed  heaven-sent  bringer  of  light  ?  And  at  bot- 
tom, was  it  not  perhaps  far  better  that  this  Shakes- 
peare, everyway  an  unconscious  man,  was  conscious 
of  no  heavenly  message?  He  did  not  feel,  like  Mahom- 
et, because  he  saw  into  those  internal  splendors, 
that  he  specially  was  the  "  prophet  of  God  : "  and  was 
he  not  greater  than  Mahomet  in  that?  Greater  ;  and 
also,  if  we  compute  strictly,  as  we  did  in  Dante's  case 
more  successful.  It  was  intrinsically  an  error  that 
notion  of  Mahomet's  of  his  supreme  prophethood;  and 
has  come  down  to  us  inextricably  involved  in  error  to 
this  day ;  dragging  along  with  it  such  a  coil  of  fables, 
impurities,  intolerances,  as  make  it  a  questionable  step 
for  me  here  and  now  to  say,  as  I  have  done,  that  Ma- 
homet was  a  true  speaker  at  all,  and  not  rather,  an 
ambitious  charlatan,  perversity  and  simulacrum;  no 
speaker,  but  a  babbler !  Even  in  Arabia,  as  I  compute, 
Mahomet  will  have  exhausted  himself  and  become  ob- 
solete, while  this  Shakespeare,  this  Dante  may  still  be 
young — while  this  Shakespeare  may  still  pretend  to 
be  a  priest  of  mankind,  of  Arabia  as  of  other  places, 
for  unlimited  periods  to  come  ! 

Compared  with  any  speaker  or  singer  one  knows, 
even  with  ^Eschylus  or  Homer,  why  should  he  not,  for 
veracity  and  universality,  last  like  them  ?  He  is  sincere 
as  they  ;  reaches  deep  down  like  them,  to  the  universal 
and  perennial.  But  as  for  Mahomet,  I  think  it  had 
been  better  for  him  not  to  be  so  conscious  !  Alas,  poor 
Mahomet ;  all  that  he  was  conscious  of  was  a  mere 
error  ;  a  futility  and  triviality — as  indeed  such  ever  is. 
The  truly  great  in  him  too  was  the  unconscious:  that 
he  was  a  wild  Arab  lion  of  the  desert,  and  did  speak 
out  with  that  great  thunder-voice  of  his,  not  by  words 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  133 

which  he  thought  to  be  great,  but  by  action,  by  feelings, 
by  a  history  which  were  great !  His  Koran  has  become 
a  stupid  piece  of  prolix  absurdity  ;  A\re  do  not  believe, 
like  him,  that  God  wrote  that !  The  great  man  here 
too,  as  always,  is  a  force  of  nature:  whatsoever  is 
truly  great  in  him  springs  up  from  the  ^articulate 
deeps. 

Well :  this  is  our  poor  Warwickshire  peasant,  who 
rose  to  be  manager  of  a  playhouse,  so  that  he  could 
live  without  begging  ;  whom  the  Earl  of  Southampton 
cast  some  kind  glances  on  ;  whom  Sir  Thomas  Lucy, 
many  thanks  to  him,  was  for  sending  to  the  treadmill ! 
We  did  not  account  him  a  god,  like  Odin,  while  he 
dwelt  with  us — on  which  point  there  were  much  to 
be  said.  But  I  will  say  rather,  or  repeat :  in  spite  of 
the  sad  state  hero  worship  now  lies  in,  consider  what 
this  Shakespeare  has  actualy  become  among  us.  Which 
Englishman  we  ever  made,  in  this  land  of  ours,  which 
million  of  Englishmen,  would  we  not  give  up  rather 
than  the  Stratford  peasant  ?  There  is  no  regiment  of 
highest  dignitaries  that  we  would  sell  him  for.  He  is 
the  grandest  thing  we  have  yet  done.  For  our  honor 
among  foreign  nations,  as  an  ornament  to  our  English 
household,  what  item  is  there  that  we  would  not  sur- 
render rather  than  him  ?  Consider  now,  if  they  asked 
us,  Will  you  give  up  your  Indian  empire  or  your  Shakes- 
peare, you  English ;  never  have  had  any  Indian  em- 
pire, or  never  have  had  any  Shakespeare  ?  Really  it  were 
a  grave  question.  Official  persons  would  answer 
doubtless  in  official  language;  but  we,  for  our  part 
too,  should  not  we  be  forced  to  answer :  Indian  empire, 
or  no  Indian  empire ;  we  cannot  do  without  Shakes- 
peare !  Indian  empire  will  go,  at  any  rate,  some  day  ; 


134  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

but  this  Shakespeare  does  not  go,  he  lasts  forever  with 
us  ;  we  cannot  give  up  our  Shakespeare  ! 

Nay,  apart  from  spiritualities  ;  and  considering  him 
merely  as  a  real,  marketable,  tangibly-useful  possession. 
England,  before  long,  this  island  of  ours,  will  hold  but 
a  small  fraction  of  the  English  :  in  America,  in  New 
Holland,  east  and  west  to  the  very  antipodes,  there 
will  be  a  Saxondom  covering  great  spaces  of  the  globe. 
And  now,  what  is  it  that  can  keep  all  these  together 
into  virtually  one  nation,  so  that  they  do  not  fall  out 
and  fight,  but  live  at  peace,  in  brotherlike  intercourse, 
helping  one  another  ?  This  is  justly  regarded  as  the 
greatest  practical  problem,  the  thing  all  manner  of 
sovereignties  and  governments  are  to  accomplish  :  what 
is  it  that  will  accomplish  this  ?  Acts  of  parliament, 
administrative  prime-ministers  cannot.  America  is 
parted  from  us,  so  far  as  parliament  could  part 
it.  Call  it  not  fantastic,  for  there  is  much  reality 
in  it;  Here,  I  say,  is  an  English  king,  whom  no 
time  or  chance,  parliament  or  combination  of  parlia- 
ments, can  dethrone!  This  King  Shakespeare  does 
he  not  shine,  in  crowded  sovereignty,  over  us  all, 
as  the  noblest,  gentlest,  yet  strongest  of  rallying  signs  ; 
^destructible ;  really  more  valuable  in  that  point  of 
view  than  any  other  means  or  appliance  whatsoever? 
We  can  fancy  him  as  radiant  aloft  over  the  nations  of 
Englishmen,  a  thousand  years  hence.  From  Paramat- 
ta, from  New  York,  wheresoever,  under  what  sort  of 
parish  constable  soever,  English  men  and  women  are, 
they  will  say  to  one  another  :  "  Yes,  this  Shakespeare 
is  ours ;  we  produced  him,  we  speak  and  think  by  him  ; 
we  are  of  one  blood  and  kind  with  him."  The  most 
common  sense  politician,  too,  if  he  pleases,  may  think 
of  that. 


THE  HERO  AS  POET.  135 

Yes,  truly,  it  is  a  great  thing  for  a  nation  that  it  get 
an  articulate  voice;  that  it  produce  a  man  who  will 
speak  forth  melodiously  what  the  heart  of  it  means ! 
Italy,  for  example,  poor  Italy  lies  dismembered,  scat- 
tered asunder,  not  appearing  in  any  protocol  or  treaty 
as  a  unity  at  all ;  yet  the  noble  Italy  is  actually  one  : 
Italy  produced  its  Dante  ;  Italy  can  speak  !  The  czar 
of  all  the  Kussias,  he  is  strong,  with  so  many  bayonets, 
Cossacks  and  cannons  ;  and  does  a  great  feat  in  keep- 
ing such  a  tract  of  earth  politically  together  ;  but  he 
cannot  yet  speak.  Something  great  in  him,  but  he  is 
a  dumb  greatness.  He  has  no  voice  of  genius,  to  be 
heard  of  all  men  and  times.  He  must  learn  to  speak. 
He  is  a  great  dumb  monster  hitherto.  His  cannons 
arid  Cossacks  will  have  rusted  into  nonentity,  while  that 
Dante's  voice  is  still  audible.  The  nation  that  has  a 
Dante  is  bound  together  as  no  dumb  Russia  can  be. 
We  must  here  end  what  we  had  to  say  of  the  hero 
poet. 


136  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 


LECTURE  IV.* 

THE   HERO   AS   PRIEST — LUTHER — REFORMATION 

KNOX — PURITANISM. 

OUR  PRESENT  discourse  is  to  be  of  the  great  man  as 
priest.  We  have  repeatedly  endeavored  to  explain  that 
all  sorts  of  heroes  are  intrinsically  of  the  same  material ; 
that  given  a  great  soul,  open  to  the  divine  significance 
of  life,  then  there  is  given  a  man  fit  to  speak  of  this,  to 
sing  of  this,  to  fight  and  work  for  this,  in  a  great, 
victorious,  enduring  manner ;  there  is  given  a  hero 
—the  outward  shape  of  whom  will  depend  on  the 
time  and  the  environment  he  finds  himself  in. 
The  priest  too,  as  I  understand  it,  is  a  kind  of  proph- 
et ;  in  him  too  there  is  required  to  be  a  light  of 
inspiration,  as  we  must  name  it.  He  presides  over  the 
worship  of  the  people;  is  the  uniter  of  them  with  the 
unseen  holy.  He  is  the  spiritual  captain  of  the  people ; 
as  the  prophet  is  their  spiritual  king  with  many  capt- 
ains :  he  guides  them  heavenward,  by  wise  guidance 
through  this  earth  and  its  work.  The  ideal  of  him  is, 
that  he  too  be  what  we  can  call  a  voice  from  the  un- 
seen heaven ;  interpreting,  even  as  the  prophet  did 
and  in  a  more  familiar  manner  unfolding  the  same  to 
men.  The  unseen  heaven — the  "  open  secret  of  the 
universe  " — which  so  few  have  an  eye  for  !  He  is  the 
prophet  shorn  of  his  more  awful  splendor ;  burning 

*Delivered  Friday,  May  15,  1840. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  137 

with  mild  equable  radiance,  as  the  enlightener  of  daily 
life.  This,  I  say,  is  the  ideal  of  a  priest.  So  in  old 
times;  so  in  these  and  in  all  times.  One  knows  very 
well  that,  in  reducing  ideals  to  practice,  great  latitude 
of  tolerance  is  needful ;  very  great.  But  a  priest  who 
is  not  this  at  all,  who  does  not  any  longer  aim  or  try 
to  be  this,  is  a  character — of  whom  we  had  rather  not 
speak  in  this  place. 

Luther  and  Knox  were  by  express  vocation  priests, 
and  did  faithfully  perform  that  function  in  its  common 
sense.  Yet  it  will  suit  us  better  here  to  consider  them 
chiefly  in  their  historical  character,  rather  as  reformers 
than  priests.  There  have  been  other  priests  perhaps 
equally  notable,  in  calmer  times,  for  doing  faithfully 
the  office  of  a  leader  of  worship ;  bringing  down,  by 
faithful  heroism  in  that  kind,  a  light  from  heaven  into 
the  daily  life  of  their  people ;  leading  them  forward, 
as  under  God's  guidance,  in  the  way  wherein  they 
were  to  go.  But  when  this  same  way  was  a  rough  one, 
of  battle,  confusion  and  danger,  the  spiritual  captain, 
who  led  through  that,  becomes,  especially  to  us  who 
live  under  the  fruit  of  his  leading,  more  notable  than 
any  other.  He  is  the  warfaring  and  battling  priest ; 
who  led  his  people,  not  to  quiet  faithful  labor  as  in 
smooth  times,  but  to  faithful  valorous  conflict,  in  times 
all  violent,  dismembered :  a  more  perilous  service  and 
a  more  memorable  one,  be  it  higher  or  not.  These 
two  men  we  will  account  our  best  priests,  inasmuch  as 
they  were  our  best  reformers.  Nay,  I  may  ask,  Is 
not  every  true  reformer,  by  the  nature  of  him,  spriest 
first  of  all?  He  appeals  to  heaven's  invisible  justice 
against  earth's  visible  force  ;  knows  that  it,  the  invis- 
ible, is  strong  and  alone  strong.  He  is  a  believer  in  the 
divine  truth  of  things;  a  seer,  seeing  through  the 


138  LECTURES  ON  HKROES. 

shows  of  things  ;  a  worshiper,  in  one  way  or  the  other, 
of  the  divine  truth  of  things ;  a  priest,  that  is.  If  he 
be  not  first  a  priest,  he  will  never  be  good  for  much  as 
a  reformer. 

Thus  then,  as  we  have  seen  great  men,  in  various 
situations,  building  up  religions,  heroic  forms  of  human 
existence  in  this  world,  theories  of  life  worthy  to  be 
sung  by  a  Dante,  practices  of  life  by  a  Shakespeare — 
we  are  now  to  see  the  reverse  process ;  which  also  is 
necessary,  which  also  may  be  carried  on  in  the  heroic 
manner.  Curious  how  this  should  be  necessary :  yet 
necessary  it  is.  The  mild  shining  of  the  poet's  light 
has  to  give  place  to  the  fierce  lightning  of  the  reformer : 
unfortunately  the  reformer  too  is  a  personage  that 
cannot  fail  in  history  !  The  poet  indeed,  with  his  mild- 
ness, what  is  he  but  the  product  and  ultimate  adjust- 
ment of  reform,  or  prophecy,  with  its  fierceness  ?  No 
wild  Saint  Dominies  and  Theba'id  Eremites,  there  had 
been  no  melodious  Dante ;  rough  practical  endeavor, 
Scandinavian  and  other,  from  Odin  to  Walter  Raleigh, 
from  Ulfila  to  Cranmer,  enabled  Shakespeare  to  speak. 
Nay  the  finished  poet,  I  remark  sometimes,  is  a  symp- 
tom that  his  epoch  itself  has  reached  perfection  and  is 
finished  ;  that  before  long  there  will  be  a  new  epoch, 
new  reformers  needed. 

Doubtless  it  were  finer,  could  we  go  along  always  in 
the  way  of  music  ;  be  tamed  and  taught  by  our  poets, 
as  the  rude  creatures  were  by  their  Orpheus  of  old. 
Or  failing  this  rhythmic  musical  way,  how  good  were 
it  could  we  get  so  much  as  into  the  equable  way ;  I 
mean,  if  peaceable  priests,  reforming  from  day  to  day, 
would  always  suffice  us !  But  it  is  not  so  ;  even  this 
latter  has  not  yet  been  realized.  Alas,  the  battling 
reformer  too  is,  from  time  to  time,  a  needful  and  in- 


T8E  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  139 

evitable  phenomenon.  Obstructions  are  never  want- 
ing :  the  very  things  that  were  once  indispensable 
furtherances  become  obstructions ;  and  need  to  be 
shaken  off,  and  left  behind  us — a  business  often  of  enor- 
mous difficulty.  It  is  notable  enough,  surely,  how  a 
theorem  or  spiritual  representation,  so  we  may  call  it, 
which  once  took  in  the  whole  universe,  and  was  com- 
pletely satisfactory  in  all  parts  of  it  to  the  highly -dis- 
cursive acute  intellect  of  Dante,  one  of  the  greatest  in 
the  world — had  in  the  course  of  another  century  be- 
come dubitable  to  common  intellects  ;  become  deniable ; 
and  is  now,  to  every  one  of  us,  flatly  incredible,  obso- 
lete as  Odin's  theorem  !  To  Dante,  human  existence, 
and  God's  ways  with  men,  were  all  well  represented 
by  those  malebolges,  purgatorios;  to  Luther  not  well. 
How  was  this?  Why  could  not  Dante's  Catholicism 
continue  ;  but  Luther's  Protestantism  must  needs  fol- 
low ?  Alas,  nothing  will  continue. 

I  do  not  make  much  of  "  progress  of  the  species," 
as  handled  in  these  times  of  ours  ;  nor  do  I  think  you 
would  care  to  hear  much  about  it.  The  talk  on  that 
subject  is  too  often  of  the  most  extravagant,  confused 
sort.  Yet  I  may  say,  that  fact  itself  seems  certain 
enough  ;  nay  we  can  trace-out  the  inevitable  necessity 
of  it  in  the  nature  of  things.  Every  man,  as  I  have 
stated  somewhere,  is  not  only  a  learner  but  a  doer  :  he 
learns  with  the  mind  given  him  what  has  been;  but 
with  the  same  mind  he  discovers  farther,  he  invents 
and  devises  somewhat  of  his  own.  Absolutely  without 
originality  there  is  no  man.  No  man  whatever  believes, 
or  can  believe,  exactly  what  his  grandfather  believed  ; 
he  enlarges  somewhat,  by  fresh  discovery,  his  view  of 
the  universe,  and  consequently  his  theorem  of  the  ani- 
verse— which  is  an  infinite  universe,  and  can  never  be 


140  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

embraced  wholly  or  finally  by  any  view  or  theorem,  in 
any  conceivable  enlargment :  he  enlarges  somewhat,  I 
say,  finds  somewhat  that  was  credible  to  his  grand- 
father incredible  to  him,  false  to  him,  inconsistent  with 
some  new  thing  he  has  discovered  or  observed.  It  is 
the  history  of  every  man  ;  and  in  the  history  of  man- 
kind we  see  it  summed  up  into  great  historical  amounts 
— revolutions,  new  epochs.  Dante's  mountain  of  pur- 
gatory does  not  stand  "  in  the  ocean  of  the  other  hem- 
isphere," when  Columbus  has  once  sailed  thither! 
Men  find  no  such  thing  extant  in  the  other  hemisphere. 
It  is  not  there.  It  must  cease  to  be  believed  to  be 
there.  So  with  all  beliefs  whatsoever  in  this  world — 
ail  systems  of  belief,  and  systems  of  practice  that  spring 
from  these. 

If  we  add  now  the  melancholy  fact,  that  when  be- 
lief waxes  uncertain,  practice  too  becomes  unsound, 
and  errors,  injustices  and  miseries  everywhere  more 
and  more  prevail,  we  shall  see  material  enough  for 
revolution.  At  all  turns,  a  man  who  will  do  faithfully, 
needs  to  believe  firmly.  If  he  have  to  ask  at  every 
turn  the  world's  suffrage ;  if  he  cannot  dispense  with 
the  world's  suffrage,  and  make  his  own  suffrage  serve, 
he  is  a  poor  eye-servant ;  the  work  committed  to  him 
will  be  ramlone.  Every  such  man  is  a  daily  contribu- 
tor to  the  inevitable  downfall.  Whatsoever  work  he 
does,  dishonestly,  with  an  eye  to  the  outward  look  of 
it,  is  a  new  offense,  parent  of  new  miseries  to  some- 
body or  other.  Offenses  accumulate  till  they  become 
insupportable  ;  and  are  then  violently  burst  through, 
cleared  off  as  by  explosion.  Dante's  sublime  Catholi- 
cism, incredible  now  in  theory,  and  defaced  still  worse 
by  faithless,  doubting  and  dishonest  practice,  has  to  be 
torn  asunder  by  a  Luther ;  Shakespeare's  noble  feudal- 


THE  HttHO  AS  PRIEST.  141 

ism,  as  beautiful  as  it  once  looked  and  was,  has  to  end 
in  a  French  revolution.  The  accumulation  of  offenses 
is,  as  we  say,  too  literally  exploded,  blasted  asunder  vol- 
canically  ;  and  there  are  long  troublous  periods  before 
matters  come  to  a  settlement  again. 

Surely  it  were  mournful  enough  to  look  only  at  this 
face  of  the  matter  and  find  in  all  human  opinions  and 
arrangements  merely  the  fact  that  they  were  uncertain, 
temporary,  subject  to  the  law  of  death  !  At  bottom, 
it  is  not  so  :  all  death,  here  too  we  find,  is  but  of  the 
body,  not  of  the  essence  or  soul ;  all  destruction,  by 
violent  revolution  or  howsoever  it  be,  is  but  new  crea- 
tion on  a  wider  scale.  Odinism  was  valor  •  Christian- 
ism  was  humility,  a  nobler  kind  of  valor.  ISTo  thought 
that  ever  dwelt  honestly  as  true  in  the  heart  of  man 
but  was  an  honest  insight  into  God's  truth  on  man's 
part  and  has  an  essential  truth  in  it  which  endures 
through  all  changes,  an  everlasting  possession  for  us 
all.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  what  a  melancholy 
notion  is  that,  which  has  to  represent  all  men,  in  all 
countries  and  times  except  our  own,  as  having  spent 
their  life  in  blind  condemnable  error,  mere  lost  pagans, 
Scandivavians,  Mahometans,  only  that  we  might  have 
the  true  ultimate  knowledge  !  All  generations  of  men 
were  lost  and  wrong,  only  that  this  present  little 
section  of  a  generation  might  be  saved  and  right. 
They  all  marched  forward  there,  all  generations  since 
the  beginning  of  the  world,  like  the  Eussian  soldiers 
into  the  ditch  of  Schweidnitz  Fort,  only  to  fill  up  the 
ditch  with  their  dead  bodies,  that  we  might  march 
over  and  take  the  place !  It  is  an  incredible  hy- 
pothesis. 

Such  incredible  hypothesis  we  have  seen  maintained 
with  fierce  emphasis  ;  and  this  or  the  other  poor  in- 


142  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

dividual  man,  with  his  sect  of  individual  men,  march- 
ing as  over  the  dead  bodies  of  all  men,  toward  sure 
victory  :  but  when  he  too,  with  his  hypothesis  and  ul- 
timate infalible  credo,  sank  into  the  ditch  and  became 

_ji  dead  body,  what  was  to  be  said  ?  Withal,  it  is  an 
important  fact  in  the  nature  of  man,  that  he  tends  to 
reckon  his  own  insight  as  final  and  goes  upon  it  as 

_such.  He  will  always  do  it,  I  suppose,  in  one  or  the 
other  way ;  but  it  must  be  in  some  wider,  wiser  way 
than  this.  Are  not  all  true  men  that  live,  or  that  ever 
lived,  soldiers  of  the  same  army,  enlisted,  under  heaven's 
captaincy,  to  do  battle  against  the  same  enemy,  the 
empire  of  darkness  and  wrong  ?  Why  should  we  mis- 
know  one  another,  fight  not  against  the  enemy  but 
against  ourselves,  from  mere  difference  of  uniform  ? 
All  uniforms  shall  be  good,  so  they  hold  in  them  true 
valiant  men.  All  fashions  of  arms,  the  Arab  turban 
and  swift  scimiter,  Thor's  strong  hammer  smiting  down 
Jotuns,  shall  be  welcome.  Luther's  battle  -  voice, 
Dante's  march-melody,  all  genuine  things  are  with  us, 
not  against  us.  We  are  all  under  one  captain,  soldiers 
of  the  same  host.  Let  us  now  look  a  little  at  this 
Luther's  fighting;  what  kind  of  battle  it  was  and 
how  he  comported  himself  in  it.  Luther  too  was  of 
our  spiritual  heroes;  a  prophet  to  his  country  and 
time. 

As  introductory  to  the  whole,  a  remark  about  idol- 
atry will  perhaps  be  in  place  here.  One  of  Mahomet's 
characteristics,  which  indeed  belongs  to  all  prophets, 
is  unlimited  implacable  zeal  against  idolatry.  It  is  the 
grand  theme  of  prophets :  idolatry,  the  worshiping  of 
dead  idols  as  the  divinity,  is  a  thing  they  cannot  away 
with,  but  have  to  denounce  continually  and  brand  with 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  143 

inexpiable  reprobation  ;  it  is  the  chief  of  all  the  sins 
they  see  done  under  the  sun.  This  is  worth  noting. 
We  will  not  enter  here  into  the  theological  question 
about  idolatry.  Idol  is  Ediolon,  a  thing  seen,  a  symbol. 
It  is  not  God,  but  a  symbol  of  God  ;  and  perhaps  one 
may  question  whether  any  of  the  most  benighted  mortal 
ever  took  it  for  more  than  a  symbol.  I  fancy,  he  did  not 
think  that  the  poor  image  his  own  hands  had  made  was 
God  ;  but  that  God  was  emblemed  by  it,  that  God  was  in 
it  someway  or  other.  And  now  in  this  sense,  one  may 
ask,  "Is  not  all  worship  whatsoever  a  worship  by  sym- 
bols, by  eidola,  or  things  seen  ?  "  Whether  seen,  ren- 
dered visible  as  an  image  or  picture  to  the  bodily  eye  ; 
or  visible  only  to  the  inward  eye,  to  the  imagination, 
to  the  intellect :  this  makes  a  superficial,  but  no  sub- 
stantial difference.  It  is  still  a  thing  seen,  significant 
of  godhead;  an  idol.  The  most  rigorous  puritan 
has  his  confession  of  faith  and  intellectual  represen- 
tation of  divine  things  and  worships  thereby  ;  thereby 
is  worship  first  made  possible  for  him.  All  creeds, 
liturgies,  religious  forms,  conceptions  that  fitly  invest 
religious  feelings,  are  in  this  sense  eidola,  things  seen. 
All  worship  whatsoever  must  proceed  by  symbols,  by 
idols — we  may  say,  all  idolatry  is  comparative  and  the 
worst  idolatry  is  only  more  idolatrous. 

Where,  then,  lies  the  evil  of  it  \  Some  fatal  evil 
must  lie  in  it,  or  earnest  prophetic  men  would  not  on  all 
hands  so  reprobate  it.  Why  is  idolatry  so  hateful  to 
prophets  ?  It  seems  to  me  as  if,  in  the  worship  of 
those  poor  wooden  symbols,  the  thing  that  had  chiefly 
provoked  the  prophet  and  filled  his  inmost  soul  with 
indignation  and  aversion,  was  not  exactly  what  sug- 
gested itself  to  his  own  thought  and  came  out  of  him 
in  words  to  others,  as  the  thing.  The  rudest  heathen 


144  LECTURES  ON  IIEROES. 

that  worshiped  Canopus,  or  the  Caabah  black  stone,  he, 
as  we  saw,  was  superior  to  the  horse  that  worshiped 
nothing  at  all !  Nay  there  was  a  kind  of  lasting  merit 
in  that  poor  act  of  his ;  analogous  to  what  is  still  mer- 
itorious in  poets :  recognition  of  a  certain  endless 
divine  beauty  and  significance  in  stars  and  all  natural 
objects  whatsoever.  Why  should  the  prophet  so  mer- 
cilessly condemn  him  ?  The  poorest  mortal  worship- 
ing his  fetich,  while  his  heart  is  full  of  it,  may  be  an 
object  of  pity,  of  contempt  and  avoidance,  if  you  will ; 
but  cannot  surely  be  an  object  of  hatred.  Let  his 
heart  ~be  honestly  full  of  it,  the  whole  space  of  his  dark 
narrow  mind  illuminated  thereby ;  in  one  word,  let 
him  entirely  believe  in  his  fetich — it  will  then  be,  I 
should  say,  if  not  well  with  him,  yet  as  well  as  it  can 
readily  be  made  to  be  and  you  will  leave  him  alone, 
unmolested  there. 

But  here  enters  the  fatal  circumstance  of  idolatry, 
that,  in  the  era  of  the  prophets,  no  man's  mind  is  any 
longer  honestly  filled  with  his  idol  or  symbol.  Before 
the  prophet  can  arise  who,  seeing  through  it,  knows  it 
to  be  mere  wood,  many  men  must  have  begun  dimly 
to  doubt  that  it  was  little  more.  Condemnable  idolatry 
is  insincere  idolatry.  Doubt  has  eaten  out  the  heart 
of  it :  a  human  soul  is  seen  clinging  spasmodically  to 
an  ark  of  the  covenant,  which  it  half  feels  now  to  have 
become  a  phantasm.  This  is  one  of  the  balefulest 
sights.  Souls  are  no  longer  filled  with  their  fetich ; 
but  only  pretend  to  be  filled  and  would  fain  make 
themselves  feel  that  they  are  filled.  "  You  do  not 
believe,"  said  Coleridge ;  "  you  only  believe  that  you 
believe."  It  is  the  final  scene  in  all  kinds  of  worship 
and  symbolism  ;  the  sure  symptom  that  death  is  now 
nigh.  It  is  equivalent  to  what  we  call  formulism  and 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  145 

worship  of  formulas,  in  these  days  of  ours.  No  more 
immoral  act  can  be  done  by  a  human  creature  ;  for  it 
is  the  beginning  of  all  immorality,  or  rather  it  is  the 
impossibility  henceforth  of  any  morality  whatsoever : 
the  innermost  moral  soul  is  paralyzed  thereby,  cast 
into  fatal  magnetic  sleep !  Men  are  no  longer  sincere' 
men.  I  do  not  wonder  that  the  earnest  man  de- 
nounces this,  brands  it,  prosecutes  it  with  inextinguish- 
able aversion.  He  and  it,  all  good  and  it,  are  at  death- 
feud.  Blamable  idolatry  is  cant  and  even  what  one 
may  call  sincere  cant.  Sincere  cant:  that  is  worth 
thinking  of  !  Every  sort  of  worship  ends  with  this 
phasis. 

I  find  Luther  to  have  been  a  breaker  of  idols,  no  less" 
than  any  other  prophet.  The  wooden  gods  of  the 
koreish,  made  of  timber  and  bees-wax,  were  not  more 
hateful  to  Mahomet  than  Tetzel's  pardons  of  sin,  made 
of  sheepskin  and  ink,  were  to  Luther.  It  is  the  prop- 
erty of  every  hero,  in  every  .time,  in  every  place  and 
situation,  that  he  come  back  to  reality  ;  that  he  stand 
upon  things  and  not  shows  of  things.  According  as  he 
loves  and  venerates,  articulately  or  with  deep  speech- 
less thought,  the  awful  realities  of  things,  so  will  the 
hollow  shows  of  things,  however  regular,  decorous, 
accredited  by  koreishes  or  conclaves,  be  intolerable 
and  detestable  to  him.  Protestantism  too  is  the  work 
of  a  prophet :  the  prophet-work  of  that  sixteenth 
century.  The  first  stroke  of  honest  demolition  to  an 
ancient  thing  grown  false  and  idolatrous ;  preparatory 
afar  off  to  a  new  thing,  which  shall  be  true  and 
authentically  divine  1 

At  first  view  it  might  seem  as  if  Protestantism  were 
entirely  destructive  to  this  that  we  call  hero  worship 
and  represent  as  the  basis  of  all  possible  good,  religious 


146  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

or  social,  for  mankind.  One  often  hears  it  said  that 
Protestantism  introduced  a  new  era,  radically  different 
from  any  the  world  had  ever  seen  before  :  the  era  of 
"  private  judgment,"  as  they  call  it.  By  this  revolt 
against  the  pope,  every  man  became  his  own  pope  ; 
and  learned,  among  other  things,  that  he  must  never 
trust  any  pope,  or  spiritual  hero-captain,  any  more ! 
Whereby,  is  not  spiritual  union,  all  hierarchy  and  sub- 
ordination among  men,  henceforth  an  impossibility  ? 
So  we  hear  it  said.  Now  I  need  not  deny  that  Prot- 
estantism was  a  revolt  against  spiritual  sovereignties, 
popes  and  much  else.  Nay  I  will  grant  that  English 
Puritanism,  revolt  against  earthly  sovereignties,  was 
the  second  act  of  it ;  that  the  enormous  French  revo- 
lution itself  was  the  third  act,  whereby  all  sovereignties 
earthly  and  spiritual  were,  as  might  seem,  abolished  or 
_made  sure  of  abolition.  Protestantism  is  the  grand 
root  from  which  our  whole  subsequent  European  hist- 
ory branches  out.  For  the  spiritual  will  always  body 
itself  forth  in  the  temporal  history  of  men ;  the  spirit- 
ual is  the  beginning  of  the  temporal.  And  now,  sure 
enough,  the  cry  is  everywhere  for  liberty  and  equality, 
independence  and  so  forth ;  instead  of  kings,  ballot- 
boxes  and  electoral  suffrages  :  it  seems  made  out  that 
any  hero  sovereign,  or  loyal  obedience  of  men  to  a 
man,  in  things  temporal  or  things  spiritual,  has  passed 
away  forever  from  the  world.  I  should  despair  of  the 
world  altogether,  if  so.  One  of  my  deepest  convictions 
is,  that  it  is  not  so.  Without  sovereigns,  true  sover- 
eigns, temporal  and  spiritual,  I  see  nothing  possible  but 
an  anarchy  ;  the  hatef  ulest  of  things.  But  I  find  Prot- 
estantism, whatever  anarchic  democracy  it  have  pro- 
duced, to  be  the  beginning  of  new  genuine  sovereignty 
a,nd  order.  I  find  it  to  be  a  revolt  against /afci  sover- 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  147 

eigns ;  the  painful  but  indispensable  first  preparative 
for  true  sovereigns  getting  place  among  us  !  This  is 
worth  explaining  a  little. 

Let  us  remark,  therefore,  in  the  first  place,  that  this 
of  "private  judgment"  is,  at  bottom,  not  a  new  thing 
in  the  world,  but  only  new  at  that  epoch  of  the  world. 
There  is  nothing  generically  new  or  peculiar  in  the 
reformation ;  it  was  a  return  to  truth  and  reality  in 
opposition  to  falsehood  and  semblance,  as  all  kinds  of 
improvement  and  genuine  teaching  are  and  have  been. 
Liberty  of  private  judgment,  if  we  will  consider  it, 
must  at  all  times  have  existed  in  the  world.  Dante 
had  not  put  out  his  eyes,  or  tied  shackles  on  himself ; 
he  was  at  home  in  that  Catholicism  of  his,  a  free-seeing 
soul  in  it — if  many  a  poor  Hogstraten,  Tetzel  and  Dr. 
Eck  had  now  become  slaves  in  it.  Liberty  of  judg- 
ment ?  No  iron  chain,  or  outward  force  of  any  kind, 
could  ever  compel  the  soul  of  a  man  to  believe  or  to 
disbelieve  :  it  is  his  own  indefeasible  light,  that  judg- 
ment of  his ;  he  will  reign  and  believe  there,  by  the 
grace  of  God  alone !  The  sorriest  sophistical  Bellar- 
mine,  preaching  sightless  faith  and  passive  obedience, 
must  first,  by  some  kind  of  conviction,  have  abdicated 
his  right  to  be  convinced.  His  "  private  judgment " 
indicated  that,  as  the  advisablest  step  he  could  take. 
The  right  of  private  judgment  will  subsist,  in  full 
force,  wherever  true  men  subsist.  A  true  m&nbelieves 
with  his  whole  judgment,  with  all  the  illumination  and 
discernment  that  is  in  him  and  has  always  so  believed. 
A  false  man,  only  struggling  to  "  believe  that  he  be- 
believes,"  will  naturally  manage  it  in  some  other  way. 
Protestanism  said  to  this  latter,  "Woe!  "  and  to  the 
former,  "  Well  done  ! "  At  bottom,  it  was  no  new 
saving ;  it  was  a  return  to  all  old  sayings  that  ever  had 


148  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

been  said.  Be  genuine,  be  sincere :  that  was,  once 
more,  the  meaning  of  it.  Mahomet  believed  with  his 
whole  mind ;  Odin  with  his  whole  mind — he  and  all 
true  followers  of  Odinism.  They,  by  their  private 
judgment,  had  "judged" — so. 

And  now  I  venture  to  assert,  that  the  exercise  of 
private  judgment,  faithfully  gone  about,  does  by  no 
means  necessarily  end  in  selfish  independence,  isola- 
tion ;  but  rather  ends  necessarily  in  the  opposite  of 
that.  It  is  not  honest  inquiry  that  makes  anarchy ; 
but  it  is  error,  insincerity,  half-belief  and  untruth  that 
make  it.  A  man  protesting  against  error  is  on  the 
way  toward  uniting  himself  with  all  men  that  believe 
in  truth.  There  is  no  communion  possible  among  men 
who  believe  only  in  hearsays.  The  heart  of  each  is 
lying  dead ;  has  no  power  of  sympathy  even  with 
things — or  he  would  believe  tliem  and  not  hearsays. 
No  sympathy  even  with  things ;  how  much  less  with 
his  fellow-men !  He  cannot  unite  with  men  ;  he  is  an 
anarchic  man.  Only  in  a  world  of  sincere  men  is 
unity  possible — and  there,  in  the  long  run,  it  is  as  good 
as  certain. 

For  observe  one  thing,  a  thing  too  often  left  out  of 
view,  or  rather  altogether  lost  sight  of,  in  this  con- 
troversy :  That  it  is  not  necessary  a  man  should  him- 
self have  discovered  the  truth  he  is  to  believe  in  and 
never  so  sincerely  to  believe  in.  A  great  man,  we  said, 
was  always  sincere,  as  the  first  condition  of  him.  But 
a  man  need  not  be  great  in  order  to  be  sincere  ;  that 
is  not  the  necessity  of  nature  and  all  time,  but  only  of 
certain  corrupt  unfortunate  epochs  of  time.  A  man 
can  believe  and  make  his  own,  in  the  most  genuine 
way,  what  he  has  received  from  another — and  with 
boundless  gratitude  to  that  other!  The  merit  of 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  149 

originality  is  not  novelty  ;  it  is  sincerity.  The  believ- 
ing man  is  the  original  man  ;  whatsoever  he  believes, 
he  believes  it  for  himself,  not  for  another.  Every  son 
of  Adam  can  become  a  sincere  man,  an  original  man,  in 
this  sense  ;  no  mortal  is  doomed  to  be  an  insincere  man. 
Whole  ages,  what  we  call  ages  of  faith,  are  original ; 
all  men  in  them,  or  the  most  of  men  in  them,  sincere. 
These  are  the  great  and  fruitful  ages  :  every  worker, 
in  all  spheres,  is  a  worker  not  on  semblance  but  on 
substance  ;  every  work  issues  in  a  result :  the  general 
sum  of  such  work  is  great ;  for  all  of  it,  as  genuine, 
tends  toward  one  goal ;  all  of  it  is  additive,  none  of  it 
subtractive.  There  is  true  union,  true  kingship,  loyalty, 
all  true  and  blessed  things,  so  far  as  the  poor  earth  can 
produce  blessedness  for  men. 

Hero  worship  ?  Ah  me,  that  a  man  be  self-subsist- 
ent,  original,  true,  or  what  we  call  it,  is  surely  the 
farthest  in  the  world  from  indisposing  him  to  rever- 
ence and  believe  other  men's  truth !  It  only  disposesr 
necessitates  and  invincibly  compels  him  to  dis believe 
other  men's  dead  formulas,  hearsays  and  untruths.  A 
man  embraces  truth  with  his  eyes  open  and  because 
his  eyes  are  open  :  does  he  need  to  shut  them  before 
he  can  love  his  teacher  of  truth  ?  He  alone  can  love, 
with  a  right  gratitude  and  genuine  loyalty  of  soul,  the 
hero  teacher  who  has  delivered  him  out  of  darkness 
into  light.  Is  not  such  a  one  a  true  hero  and  serpent- 
queller  ;  worthy  of  all  reverence !  The  black  monster, 
falsehood,  our  one  enemy  in  this  world,  lies  prostrate 
by  his  valor ;  it  was  he  that  conquered  the  world  for 
us !  See,  accordingly,  was  not  Luther  himself  rever- 
enced as  a  true  pope,  or  spiritual  father,  being  verily 
such?  Napoleon,  from  amid  boundless  revolt  of  san- 
sculottism,  became  a  king.  Hero  worship  never  dies, 


150  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

nor  can  die.  Loyalty  and  sovereignty  are  everlasting 
in  the  world — and  there  is  this  in  them,  that  they  are 
grounded  not  on  garnitures  and  semblances,  but  on  re- 
alities and  sincerities.  Not  by  shutting  your  eyes, 
your  "private  judgment;"  no,  but  by  opening  them 
and  by  having  something  to  see !  Luther's  message 
was  deposition  and  abolition  to  all  false  popes  and  po- 
tentates, but  life  and  strength,  though  afar  off  to  new 
genuine  ones. 

All  this  of  liberty  and  equality,  electoral  suffrages, 
independence  and  so  forth,  we  will  take,  therefore,  to 
be  a  temporary  phenomenon,  by  no  means  a  final  one. 
Though  likely  to  last  a  long  time,  with  sad  enough 
embroilments  for  us  all,  we  must  welcome  it,  as  the 
penalty  of  sins  that  are  past,  the  pledge  of  inestimable 
benefits  that  are  coming.  In  all  ways,  it  behoved  men 
to  quit  simulacra  and  return  to  fact ;  cost  what  it  might, 
that  did  behove  to  be  done.  With  spurious  popes,  and 
believers  having  no  private  judgment — quacks  pretend- 
ing to  command  over  dupes — what  can  you  do  ?  Misery 
and  mischief  only.  You  cannot  make  an  association  out 
of  insincere  men;  you  cannot  build  an  edifice  except 
by  plummet  and  level — at  right-Singles  to  one  another ! 
In  all  this  wild  revolutionary  work,  from  Protestantism 
downward,  I  see  the  blessedest  result  preparing  itself : 
not  abolition  of  hero  worship,  but  rather  what  I  would 
call  a  whole  world  of  heroes.  If  hero  mean  sincere 
man,  why  may  not  every  one  of  us  be  a  hero  ?  A 
world  all  sincere,  a  believing  world:  the  like  has 
been ;  the  like  will  again  be — cannot  help  being. 
That  were  the  right  sort  of  worshipers  for  heroes : 
never  could  the  truly  better  be  so  reverenced  as  where 
_all  were  true  and  good !  But  we  must  hasten  to  Luther 
and  his  life. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  151 

Luther's  birthplace  was  Eisleben  in  Saxony  ;  he  came 
into  the  world  there  on  November  10,  1483.  It  was 
an  accident  that  gave  this  honor  to  Eisleben.  His 
parents,  poor  mine-laborers  in  a  village  of  that  region, 
named  Mohra,  had  gone  to  the  Eisleben  winter-fair : 
in  the  tumult  of  this  scene  the  Frau  Luther  was  taken 
with  travail,  found  refuge  in  some  poor  house  there 
and  the  boy  she  bore  was  named  Martin  Luther. 
Strange  enough  to  reflect  upon  it.  This  poor  Frau 
Luther,  she  had  gone  with  her  husband  to  make  her 
small  merchandisings  ;  perhaps  to  sell  the  lock  of  yarn 
she  had  been  spinning,  to  buy  the  small  winter-neces- 
saries for  her  narrow  hut  or  household  ;  in  the  whole 
world,  that  day,  there  was  not  a  more  entirely  unim- 
portant-looking pair  of  people  than  this  miner  and  his 
wife.  And  yet  what  were  all  emperors,  popes  and  po- 
tentates, in  comparison  ?  There  was  born  here,  once 
more,  a  mighty  man ;  whose  light  was  to  flame  as  the 
beacon  over  long  centuries  and  epochs  of  the  world ; 
the  whole  world  and  its  history  was  waiting  for  this 
man.  It  is  strange,  it  is  great.  It  leads  us  back  to 
another  birth-hour,  in  a  still  meaner  environment, 
eighteen  hundred  years  ago — of  which  it  is  fit  that  we 
say  nothing,  that  we  think  only  in  silence ;  for  what 
words  are  there  !  The  age  of  miracles  past  ?  The  age 
of  miracles  is  forever  here ! 

I  find  it  altogether  suitable  to  Luther's  function  in 
this  earth,  and  doubtless  wisely  ordered  to  that  end  by 
the  providence  presiding  over  him  and  us  and  all  things, 
that  he  was  born  poor,  and  brought  up  poor,  one  of 
of  the  poorest  of  men.  He  had  to  beg,  as  the  school- 
children in  those  times  did  ;  singing  for  alms  and  bread, 
from  door  to  door.  Hardship,  rigorous  necessity  was 
the  poor  boy's  companion;  no  man  nor  no  thing  would 


152  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

put  on  a  false  face  to  flatter  Martin  Luther.  Among 
things,  not  among  the  shows  of  things,  had  he  to  grow. 
A  boy  of  rude  figure,  yet  with  weak  health,  with  his 
large  greedy  soul,  full  of  all  faculty  and  sensibility,  he 
suffered  greatly.  But  it  was  his  task  to  get  acquainted 
with  realities,  and  keep  acquainted  with  them,  at  what- 
ever cost :  his  task  was  to  bring  the  whole  world  back 
to  reality,  for  it  had  dwelt  too  long  with  semblance  ! 
A  youth  nursed  up  in  wintry  whirlwinds,  in  desolate 
darkness  and  difficulty,  that  he  may  step  forth  at  last 
from  his  stormy  Scandinavia,  strong  as  a  true  man,  as 
a  god:  a  Christian  Odin — a  right  Thor  once  more, 
with  his  thunder-hammer,  to  smite  asunder  ugly  enough 
Jotuns  and  giant  monsters ! 

Perhaps  the  turning  incident  of  his  life,  we  may 
fancy,  was  that  death  of  his  friend  Alexis,  by  lightning, 
at  the  gate  of  Erfurt.  Luther  had  struggled  up 
through  boyhood,  better  and  worse ;  displaying,  in 
spite  of  all  hindrances,  the  largest  intellect,  eager  to 
learn  :  his  father  judging  doubtless  that  he  might  pro- 
mote himself  in  the  world,  set  him  upon  the  study  of 
law.  This  was  the  path  to  rise ;  Luther,  with  little 
will  in  it  either  way,  had  consented  :  he  was  now  nine- 
teen years  of  age.  Alexis  and  he  had  been  to  see  the 
old  Luther  people  at  Mansfeldt ;  were  got  back  again 
near  Erfurt,  when  a  thunderstorm  came  on  ;  the  bolt 
struck  Alexis,  he  fell  dead  at  Luther's  feet.  "What  is 
this  life  of  ours — gone  in  a  moment,  burned  up  like  a 
scroll,  into  the  blank  eternity  !  What  are  all  earthly 
preferments,  chancellorships,  kingships?  They  lie 
shrunk  together — there!  The  earth  has  opened  on  them; 
in  a  moment  they  are  not,  and  eternity  is.  Luther, 
struck  to  the  heart,  determined  to  devote  himself  to 
God  and  God's  service  alone.,  In  spite  of  all  dissuas- 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  153 

ions  from  his  father  and  others,  he  became  a  monk  in 
the  Augustine  convent  at  Erfurt. 

This  was  probably  the  first  light-point  in  the  history 
of  Luther  his  purer  will  now  first  decisively  uttering 
itself;  but,  for  the  present,  it  was  still  as  one  light- 
point  in  an  element  all  of  darkness.  He  says  he  was  a. 
pious  monk,  ich  ~bin  einfrommerMoncligewesen;  faith- 
fully, painfully  struggling  to  work  out  the  truth  of 
this  high  act  of  his  ;  but  it  was  to  little  purpose.  His 
misery  had  not  lessened  ;  had  rather,  as  it  were,  in- 
creased into  infinitude.  The  drudgeries  he  had  to  do, 
as  novice  in  his  convent,  all  sorts  of  slave- work,  were 
not  his  grievance :  the  deep  earnest  soul  of  the  man 
had  fallen  into  all  manner  of  black  scruples,  dubitations ; 
he  believed  himself  likely  to  die  soon,  and  far  worse 
than  die.  One  hears  with  new  interest  for  poor  Lu- 
ther that,  at  this  time,  he  lived  in  terror  of  the  unspeak- 
able misery ;  fancied  that  he  was  doomed  to  eternal 
reprobation.  Was  it  not  the  humble  sincere  nature  of 
the  man  ?  What  was  he,  that  he  should  be  raised  to 
heaven  !  He  that  had  known  only  misery,  and  mean 
slavery  :  the  news  was  too  blessed  to  be  credible.  It 
could  not  become  clear  to  him  how,  by  fasts,  vigils, 
formalities  and  mass-work,  a  man's  soul  could  be 
saved.  He  fell  into  the  blackest  wretchedness ;  had 
to  wander  staggering  as  on  the  verge  of  bottomless 
despair. 

It  must  have  been  a  most  blessed  discovery,  that  of 
an  old  Latin  Bible  which  he  found  in  the  Erfurt  library 
about  this  time.  He  had  never  seen  the  book  before. 
It  taught  him  another  lesson  than  that  of  fasts  and 
vigils.  A  brother  monk  too,  of  pious  experience,  was 
helpful.  Luther  learned  now  that  a  man  was  saved 
not  by  singing  masses,  but  by  the  infinite  grace  of  God ; 


154  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

a  more  credible  hypothesis.  He  gradually  got  him- 
self founded,  as  on  the  rock.  No  wonder  he  should 
venerate  the  Bible,  which  had  brought  this  blessed 
help  to  him.  He  prized  it  as  the  word  of  the  Highest 
must  be  prized  by  such  a  man.  He  determine  to 
hold  by  that ;  as  through  life  and  to  death  he  firmly 
did. 

This,  then,  is  his  deliverance  from  darkness,  his  final 
triumph  over  darkness,  what  we  call  his  conversion ; 
for  himself  the  most  important  of  all  epochs.  That  he 
should  now  grow  daily  in  peace  and  clearness  ;  that, 
unfoldirtg  now  the  great  talents  and  virtues  implanted 
in  him,  he  should  rise  to  importance  in  his  convent,  in 
his  country,  and  be  found  more  and  more  useful  in  all 
honest  business  of  life,  is  a  natural  result.  He  was 
sent  on  missions  by  his  Augustine  order,  as  a  man  of 
talent  and  fidelity  fit  to  do  their  business  well :  the 
elector  of  Saxony,  Friedrich,  named  the  Wise,  a  truly 
wise  and  just  prince,  had  cast  his  eye  on  him  as  a  valu- 
able person  ;  made  him  professor  in  his  new  university 
of  Wittenberg,  preacher  too  at  Wittenberg ;  in  both 
Avhich  capacities,  as  in  all  duties  he  did,  this  Luther,  in 
the  peaceable  sphere  of  common  life,  was  gaining  more 
and  more  esteem  with  all  good  men. 

It  was  in  his  twenty-seventh  year  that  he  first  saw 
Rome ;  being  sent  hither,  as  I  said,  on  mission  from 
his  convent.  Pope  Julius  II  and  what  was  going  on 
at  Rome,  must  have  filled  the  mind  of  Luther  with 
amazement.  He  had  come  as  to  the  sacred  city,  throne 
of  God's  high  priest  on  earth  ;  and  he  found  it — what 
we  know !  Many  thoughts  it  must  have  given  the 
man ;  many  which  we  have  no  record  of,  which  per- 
haps he  did  not  himself  know  how  to  utter.  This 
Rome,  this  scene  of  false  priests,  clothed  not  in  the 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  155 

beauty  of  holiness,  but  in  far  other  vesture,  is  false: 
but  what  is  it  to  Luther  ?  A  mean  man  he,  how  shall 
he  reform  a  world  ?  That  was  far  from  his  thoughts* 
A  humble,  solitary  man,  why  should  he  at  all  meddle 
with  the  world  ?  It  was  the  task  of  quite  higher  men 
than  he.  His  business  was  to  guide  his  own  footsteps 
wisely  through  the  world.  Let  him  do  his  own  obscure 
duty  in  it  well ;  the  rest,  horrible  and  dismal  as  it  looks, 
is  in  God's  hand,  not  in  his. 

It  is  curious  to  reflect  what  might  have  been  the 
issue,  had  Roman  popery  happened  to  pass  this  Luther 
by ;  to  go  on  in  its  great  wasteful  orbit  and  not  come 
athwart  his  little  path  and  force  him  to  assault  it ! 
Conceivable  enough  that,  in  this  case,  he  might  have 
held  his  peace  about  the  abuses  of  Rome  ;  left  provi- 
dence and  God  on  high,  to  deal  with  them  !  A  modest 
quiet  man ;  not  prompt  he  to  attack  irreverently  per- 
sons in  authority.  His  clear  task,  as  I  say,  was  to  do 
his  own  duty ;  to  walk  wisely  in  this  world  of  confused 
wickedness  and  save  his  own  soul  alive.  But  the 
Roman  highpriesthood  did  come  athwart  him :  afar 
off  at  Wittenberg  he,  Luther,  could  not  get  lived  in 
honesty  for  it ;  he  remonstrated,  resisted,  came  to  ex- 
tremity ;  was  struck  at,  struck  again  and  so  it  came  to 
wager  of  battle  between  them  !  This  is  worth  attend- 
ing to  in  Luther's  history.  Perhaps  no  man  of  so 
•humble,  peaceable  a  disposition  ever  filled  the  world 
with  contention.  "We  cannot  but  see  that  he  would 
have  loved  privacy,  quiet  diligence  in  the  shade  ;  that 
it  was  against  his  will  he  ever  became  a  notoriety. 
Notoriety  :  what  would  that  do  for  him  ?  The  goal  of 
his  march  through  this  world  was  the  infinite  heaven  ; 
an  indubitable  goal  for  him  :  in  a  few  years,  he  should 
either  have  attained  that,  or  lost  it  forever  !  We  will 


156  LECTURES  ON  IIKROE8. 

say  nothing  at  all,  I  think,  of  that  sorrowfulest  of 
theories,  of  its  being  some  mean  shopkeeper  grudge, 
of  the  Augustine  monk  against  the  domim'can,  that 
first  kindled  the  wrath  of  Luther  and  produced  the 
Protestant  reformation.  We  will  say  to  the  people 
who  maintain  it,  if  indeed  any  such  exist  now:  Get 
first  into  the  sphere  of  thought  by  which  it  is  so  much 
as  possible  to  judge  of  Luther,  or  of  any  man  like 
Luther,  otherwise  than  distractedly  ;  we  may  then 
begin  arguing  with  you. 

The  Monk  Tetsel,  sent  out  carelessly  in  the  way  of 
trade,  by  Leo  X — who  merely  wanted  to  raise  a  little 
money  and  for  the  rest  seems  to  have  been  a  pagan 
rather  than  a  Christian,  so  far  as  he  was  anything — ar- 
rived at  Wittenberg  and  drove  his  scandalous  trade 
there.  Luther's  flock  bought  indulgencies  ;  in  the  con- 
fessional of  his  church,  people  pleaded  to  him  that  they 
had  already  got  their  sins  pardoned.  Luther,  if  he 
would  not  be  found  wanting  at  his  own  post,  a  false 
sluggard  and  coward  at  the  very  center  of  the  little 
space  of  ground  that  was  his  own  and  no  other  man's, 
had  to  step  forth  against  indulgencies  and  declare 
aloud  that  they  were  a  futility  and  sorrowful  mockery, 
that  no  man's  sins  could  be  pardoned  by  them.  It  was 
the  beginning  of  the  whole  reformation.  We  know 
how  it  went ;  forward  from  this  first  public  challenge 
of  Tetzel,  on  the  last  day  of  October  1517,  through 
remonstrance  and  argument — spreading  ever  wider, 
rising  ever  higher ;  till  it  became  unquenchable  and 
enveloped  all  the  world.  Luther's  heart's-desire  was 
to  have  this  grief  and  other  griefs  amended  ;  his 
thought  was  still  far  other  than  that  of  introducing 
separation  in  the  church,  or  revolting  against  the  pope, 
father  of  Christendom.  The  elegant  pagan  pope 


THK  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  157 

cared  little  about  this  monk  and  his  doctrines  ;  wished, 
however,  to  have  done  with  the  noise  of  him :  in  a 
space  of  some  three  years,  having  tried  various  softer 
methods,  he  thought  good  to  end  it  by  fire.  He  dooms 
the  monk's  writings  to  be  burned  by  the  hangman  and 
his  body  to  be  sent  bound  to  Rome — probably  for  a  simi- 
lar purpose.  It  was  the  way  they  had  ended  with  Huss, 
with  Jerome,  the  century  before.  A  short  argument, 
fire.  Poor  Huss :  he  came  to  that  Constance  council, 
with  all  imaginable  promises  and  safe-conducts;  an 
earnest,  not  rebellious  kind  of  man  :  they  laid  him  in- 
stantly in  a  stone  dungeon  "  three  feet  wide,  six  feet 
high,  seven  feet  long  ;  "  burned  the  true  voice  of  him 
out  of  this  world  ;  choked  it  in  smoke  and  fire.  That 
was  not  well  done ! 

I,  for  one,  pardon  Luther  for  now  altogether  revolt- 
ing against  the  pope.  The  elegant  pagan,  by  this  fire- 
decree  of  his,  had  kindled  into  noble  just  wrath  the 
bravest  heart  then  living  in  this  world.  The  bravest, 
if  also  one  of  the  humblest,  peaceablest ;  it  was  now 
kindled.  These  words  of  mine,  words  of  truth  and 
soberness,  aiming  faithfully,  as  human  inability  would 
allow,  to  promote  God's  truth  on  earth,  and  save  men's 
souls,  you,  God's  vicegerent  on  earth,  answer  them  by  the 
hangman  and  fire?  You  will  burn  me  and  them,  for 
answer  to  the  God's-message  they  strove  to  bring  you  ? 
You  are  not  God's  vicegerent ;  you  are  another's  than 
His,  I  think  !  I  take  your  bull,  as  an  emparchmented 
lie,  and  burn  it.  You  will  do  what  you  see  good  next : 
this  is  what  I  do.  It  was  on  December  10,  1520, 
three  years  after  the  beginning  of  the  business,  that 
Luther,  "  with  a  great  concourse  of  people,"  took  this 
indignant  step  of  burning  the  pope's  fire-decree  "  at 
the  Elster  gate  of  Wittenburg."  Wittenburg  looked 


158  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

on  "  with  shoutings ; "  the  whole  world  was  looking 
on.  The  pope  should  not  have  provoked  that  "  shout ! " 
It  was  the  shout  of  the  awakening  of  nations.  The 
quiet  German  heart,  modest,  patient  of  much,  had  at 
length  got  more  than  it  could  bear.  Formulism,  pagan 
popeism,  and  other  falsehood  and  corrupt  semblance 
had  ruled  long  enough  :  and  here  once  more  was  a  man 
found  who  durst  tell  all  men  that  God's-world  stood 
not  on  semblances  but  on  realities ;  that  life  was  a 
truth,  and  not  a  lie  ! 

At  bottom,  as  was  said  above,  we  are  to  consider 
Luther  as  a  prophet  idol-breaker  ;  a  bringer-back  of 
men  to  reality.  It  is  the  function  of  great  men  and 
teachers.  Mahomet  said,  These  idols  of  yours  are 
wood ;  you  put  wax  and  oil  on  them,  the  flies  stick  on 
them :  they  are  not  God,  I  tell  you,  they  are  black 
wood  !  Luther  said  to  the  pope,  This  thing  of  yours 
that  you  call  a  pardon  of  sins,  it  is  a  bit  of  rag-paper 
with  ink.  It  is  nothing  else  ;  it,  and  so  much  like  it, 
is  nothing  else.  God  alone  can  pardon  sins.  Popeship, 
spiritual  fatherhood  of  God's  church,  is  that  a  vain 
semblance,  of  cloth  and  parchment?  It  is  an  awful 
fact.  God's  church  is  not  a  semblance,  heaven  and  hell 
are  not  semblances.  I  stand  on  this,  since  you  drive 
me  to  it.  Standing  on  this,  I  a  poor  German  monk  am 
stronger  than  you  all.  I  stand  solitary,  friendless,  but 
on  God's  truth  ;  you  with  your  tiaras,  triple-hats,  with 
your  treasuries  and  armories,  thunders  spiritual  and 
temporal,  stand  on  the  devil's  lie,  and  are  not  so 
strong ! 

The  Diet  of  Worms,  Luther's  appearance  there  on 
April  17,  1521,  may  be  considered  as  the  greatest  scene 
in  modern  European  history  ;  the  point,  indeed,  from 
which  the  whole  sebsequent  history  of  civilization  takes 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  159 

its  rise.  After  multiplied  negotiations,  disputations,  it 
had  come  to  this.  The  young  Emperor  Charles  V, 
with  all  the  princes  of  Germany,  papal  nuncios,  digni- 
taries spiritual  and  temporal,  are  assembled  there : 
Luther  is  to  appear  and  answer  for  himself,  whether 
he  will  recant  or  not;  The  world's  pomp  and  power 
sits  there  on  this  hand  :  on  that,  stands  up  for  God's 
truth,  one  man,  the  poor  miner  Hans  Luther's  son. 
Friends  had  reminded  him  of  Huss,  advised  him  not  to 
go ;  he  would  not  be  advised.  A  large  company  of 
friends  rode  out  to  meet  him,  with  still  more  earnest 
warnings ;  he  answered  :  "  Were  there  as  many  devils 
in  Worms  as  there  are  roof -tiles,  I  would  on."  The 
people,  on  the  morrow,  as  he  went  to  the  hall  of  the 
diet,  crowded  the  windows  and  house  tops,  some  of 
them  calling  out  to  him,  in  solemn  words,  not  to  re- 
cant:  "Whosoever  denieth  me  before  men!"  they 
cried  to  him — as  in  a  kind  of  solemn  petition  and  ad- 
juration. Was  it  not  in  reality  our  petition  too,  the 
petition  of  the  whole  world,  lying  in  dark  bondage  of 
soul,  paralyzed  under  a  black  spectral  nightmare  and 
triple-hatted  chimera,  calling  itself  father  of  God,  and 
what  not :  "  Free  us ;  it  rests  with  thee ;  desert  us 
not!" 

Luther  did  not  desert  us.  His  speech,  of  two  hours, 
distinguished  itself  by  its  respectful,  wise  and  honest 
tone ;  submissive  to  whatsoever  could  lawfully  claim 
submission,  not  submissive  to  any  more  than  that.  His 
writings,  he  said,  were  partly  his  own,  partly  derived 
from  the  word  of  God.  As  to  what  was  his  own, 
human  infirmity  entered  upon  it;  unguarded  anger, 
blindness,  many  things  doubtless  which  it  were  a  bless- 
ing for  him  could  he  abolish  altogether.  But  as  to 
what  stood  on  sound  truth  and  the  word  of  God,  he 


160  LECTURES  OF  HEROES. 

could  not  recant  it.  How  could  he  ?  "  Confute  me," 
he  concluded,  "  by  proofs  of  scripture,  or  else  by  plain 
just  arguments  :  I  cannot  recant  otherwise.  For  it  is 
neither  safe  nor  prudent  to  do  aught  against  conscience. 
Here  stand  I ;  I  can  do  no  other  :  God  assist  me  !  "  It 
"is,  as  we  say,  the  greatest  moment  in  the  modern  his- 
tory of  men.  English  puritanism,  England  and  its 
parliaments,  Americas,  and  vast  work  these  two  centur- 
ies ;  French  revolution,  Europe  and  its  work  ever v  where 
at  present :  the  germ  of  it  all  lay  there :  had  Luther  in 
that  moment  done  other,  it  had  all  been  otherwise ! 
The  European  world  was  asking  him  :  Am  I  to  sink 
ever  lower  into  falsehood,  stagnant  putrescence, 
loathsome  accursed  death;  or,  with  whatever  par- 
oxysm, to  cast  the  falsehoods  out  of  me,  and  be  cured 

and  live  ? 

..-» 

Great  wars,  contentions  and  disunion  followed  out 
of  this  reformation  ;  which  last  down  to  our  day,  and 
are  yet  far  from  ended.  Great  talk  and  crimination 
has  been  made  about  these.  They  are  lamentable,  un- 
deniable ;  but  after  all,  what  has  Luther  or  his  cause  to 
do  with  them  ?  It  seems  strange  reasoning  to  charge 
the  reformer  with  all  this.  When  Hercules  turned  the 
purifying  river  into  King  Augeas'  stables,  I  have  no 
doubt  the  confusion  that  resulted  was  considerable  all 
around :  but  I  think  it  was  not  Hercules'  blame ;  it 
was  some  other's  blame  !  The  reformation  might 
bring  what  results  it  liked  when  it  came,  but  the  re- 
formation simply  could  not  help  coming.  To  all  popes 
and  popes'  advocates,  expostulating,  lamenting  and  ac- 
cusing, the  answer  of  the  world  is  :  Once  for  all,  your 
popehood  has  become  untrue.  No  matter  how  good 
it  was,  how  good  you  say  it  is,  we  cannot  believe  it ; 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  161 

the  light  of  our  whole  mind,  given  us  to  walk  by  from 
heaven  above,  finds  it  henceforth  a  thing  unbelievable. 
We  will  not  believe  it,  we  will  not  try  to  believe  it — • 
we  dare  not !  The  thing  is  untrue  ;  we  were  traitors 
against  the  Giver  of  all  truth,  if  we  durst  pretend  to 
think  it  true.  Away  with  it ;  let  whatsoever  likes 
come  in  the  place  of  it :  with  it  we  can  have  no  far- 
ther trade  !  Luther  and  his  Protestantism  is  not  re- 
sponsible for  wars  ;  the  false  Simulacra  that  forced  him 
to  protest,  they  are  responsible.  Luther  did  what 
every  man  that  God  has  made  has  not  only  the  right, 
but  lies  under  the  sacred  duty,  to  do :  answered  a 
falsehood  when  it  questioned  him,  Dost  thou  believe 
me?  No  !  At  what  cost  soever,  without  counting  of 
costs,  this  thing  behoved  to  be  done.  Union,  organiza- 
tion spiritual  and  material,  a  far  nobler  than  any  pope- 
dom  or  feudalism  in  their  truest  days,  I  never  doubt, 
is  coming  for  the  world  ;  sure  to  come.  But  on  fact 
alone,  not  on  semblance  and  simulacrum,  will  it  be 
able  either  to  come,  or  to  stand  when  come.  With 
union  grounded  on  falsehood,  and  ordering  us  to  speak 
and  act  lies,  we  will  not  have  anything  to  do. 
Peace?  A  brutal  lethargy  is  peaceable,  the  noisome 
grave  is  peaceable.  We  hope  for  a  living  peace,  not  a 
dead  one ! 

And  yet,  in  prizing  justly  the  indispensable  blessings 
of  the  new,  let  us  not  be  unjust  to  the  old.  The  old 
was  true,  if  it  no  longer  is.  In  Dante's  days  it  needed 
no  sophistry,  self-binding  or  other  dishonesty,  to  get 
itself  reckoned  true.  It  was  good  then  ;  nay  there  is  in 
the  soul  of  it  a  deathless  good.  The  cry  of  "  No 
popery"  is  foolish  enough  in  these  days.  The  specuIaT" 
tion  that  popery  is  on  the  increase,  building  new 
chapels  and  so  forth,  may  pass  for  one  of  the  idlest 


1 62  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

ever  started.  Very  curious :  to  count  up  a  few  popish 
chapels,  listen  to  a  few  Protestant  logic-choppings — to 
much  dull-droning  drowsy  inanity  that  still  calls  itself 
Protestant,  and  say :  See,  Protestantism  is  dead ; 
popeism  is  more  alive  than  it,  will  be  alive  after  it ! 
Drowsy  inanities,  not  a  few,  that  call  themselves  Pro- 
testant are'  dead  ;  but  Protestantism  has  not  died  yet, 
that  I  hear  of !  Protestantism,  if  we  will  look,  has  in 
these  days  produced  its  Goethe,  its  Napoleon  ;  German 
literature  and  the  French  revolution  ;  rather  consider- 
able signs  of  life !  Nay,  at  bottom,  what  else  is  alive 
but  Protestantism  ?  The  life  of  most  else  that  one 
meets  is  a  galvanic  one  merely — not  a  pleasant,  not  a 
lasting  sort  of  life  ! 

Popery  can  build  new  chapels ;  welcome  to  do  so,  to 
all  lengths.  Popery  cannot  come  back,  any  more  than 
paganism  can  ;  which  also  still  lingers  in  some  countries. 
But,  indeed,  it  is  with  these  things,  as  with  the  ebbing 
of  the  sea :  you  look  at  the  waves  oscillating  hither,  thith- 
er on  the  beach  ;  for  minutes  you  cannot  tell,how  it  is  go- 
ing; look  in  half  an  hour  where  it  is;  look  in  half  a  century 
where  your  popehood  is  !  Alas,  would  there  were  no 
greater  danger  to  our  Europe  than  the  poor  old  pope's 
revival !  Thor  may  as  soon  try  to  revive.  And  withal 
this  oscillation  has  a  meaning.  The  poor  old  pope- 
hood  will  not  die  away  entirely,  as  Thor  has  done,  for 
some  time  yet ;  nor  ought  it.  We  may  say,  the  old 
never  dies  till  this  happen,  till  all  the  soul  of  good  that 
was  in  it  have  got  itself  transfused  into  the  practical 
new.  While  a  good  work  remains  capable  of  being 
done  by  the  Romish  form ;  or,  what  is  inclusive  of  all, 
while  a,pious  life  remains  capable  of  being  led  by  it, 
just  so  long,  if  we  consider,  will  this  or  the  other 
human  soul  adopt  it,  go  about  as  a  living  witness  of  it. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  163 

So  long  it  will  obtrude  itself  on  the  eye  of  us  who 
reject  it,  till  we  in  our  practice  too  have  appropriated 
whatsoever  of  truth  was  in  it.  Then,  but  also  not  till 
then,  it  will  have  no  charm  more  for  any  man.  It 
lasts  here  for  a  purpose.  Let  it  last  as  long  as  it  can. 

Of  Luther  I  will  add  now,  in  reference  to  all  these 
wars  and  bloodshed,  the  noticeable  fact  that  none  of 
them  began  so  long  as  he  continued  living.  The  con- 
troversy did  not  get  to  fighting  so  long  as  he  was  there. 
To  me  is  the  proof  of  his  greatness  in  all  senses,  this 
fact.  How  seldom  do  we  find  a  man  that  has  stirred 
up  some  vast  commotion,  who  does  not  himself  perish, 
swept  away  in  it !  Such  is  the  usual  course  of  revolu- 
tionists. Luther  continued,  in  a  good  degree,  sovereign 
of  this  greatest  revolution :  all  Protestants,  of  what 
rank  or  function  soever,  looking  much  to  him  for  guid- 
ance :  and  he  held  it  peaceable,  continued  firm  at  center 
of  it.  A  man  to  do  this  must  have  a  kingly  faculty  : 
he  must  have  the  gift  to  discern  at  all  turns  where  the 
true  heart  of "  the  matter  lies,  and  to  plant  himself 
courageously  on  that,  as  a  strong  true  man,  that  other 
true  men  may  rally  round  him  there.  He  will  not 
continue  leader  of  men  otherwise.  Luther's  clear  deep 
force  of  judgment,  his  force  of  all  sorts,  of  silence,  of 
tolerance  and  moderation,  among  others,  are  very  not- 
able in  these  circumstances. 

Tolerance,  I  say ;  a  very  genuine  kind  of  tolerance : 
he  distinguishes  what  is  essential,  and  what  is  not ;  the 
unessential  may  go  very  much  as  it  will.  A  complaint 
comes  to  him  that  such  and  such  a  reformed  preacher 
"  will  not  preach  without  a  cassock."  "  Well,"  answers 
Luther,  "  what  harm  will  a  cassock  do  the  man?  Let 
him  have  a  cassock  to  preach  in ;  let  him  have  three 


164  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

cassocks  if  he  find  benefit  in  them  !  "  His  conduct  in 
the  matter  of  Karlstadt's  wild  image-breaking;  of 
the  Anabaptists ;  of  the  peasants'  war,  shows  a  noble 
strength,  very  different  from  spasmodic  violence. 
With  sure  prompt  insight  he  discriminates  what  is 
what :  a  strong  just  man,  he  speaks  forth  what  is  the 
wise  course,  and  all  men  follow  him  in  that.  Luther's 
written  works  give  similar  testimony  of  him.  The 
dialect  of  these  speculations  is  now  grown  obsolete  for 
us ;  but  one  still  reads  them  with  a  singular  attraction. 
And  indeed  the  mere  grammatical  diction  is  still 
legible  enough  ;  Luther's  merit  in  literary  history  is  of 
the  greatest;  his  dialect  became  the  language  of  all 
writing.  They  are  not  well  written,  these  four-and- 
twenty  quartos  of  his;  written  hastily,  with  quite  other 
than  literary  objects.  But  in  no  books  have  I  found  a 
more  robust,  genuine,  I  will  say  noble  faculty  of  a 
man  than  in  these.  A  rugged  honesty,  homeliness,  sim- 
plicity :  a  rugged  sterling  sense  and  strength.  He 
flashes  out  illumination  from  him  ;  his  smiting  idiomatic 
phrases  seem  to  cleave  into  the  very  secret  of  the 
matter .  Good  humor  too,  nay  tender  affection,  noble- 
ness, and  depth  :  this  man  could  have  been  a  poet 
too !  He  had  to  work  an  epic  poem,  not  write  one. 
I  call  him  a  great  thinker  ;  as  indeed  his  greatness  of 
heart  already  betokens  that. 

Rich ter says  of  Luther's  words,  "his  words  are  half- 
battles."  They  may  be  called  so.  The  essential  qual- 
ity of  him  was,  that  he  could  light  and  conquer ;  that 
he  was  a  right  piece  of  human  valor.  No  more  valiant 
man,  no  mortal  heart  to  be  called  braver,  that  one  has 
record  of,  ever  lived  in  that  Teutonic  kindred,  whose 
character  is  valor.  His  defiance  of  the  "devils"  in 
Worms  was  not  a  mere  boast,  as  the  like  might  be  if 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  165 

now  spoken.  It  was  a  faith  of  Luther's  that  there 
were  devils,  spiritual  denizens  of  the  pit,  continually 
besetting  men.  Many  times,  in  his  writings,  this  turns 
up ;  and  a  most  small  sneer  has  been  grounded  on  it 
by  some.  In  the  room  of  the  Wartburg  where  he  sat 
translating  the  Bible,  they  still  show  you  a  black  spot 
on  the  wall ;  the  strange  memorial  of  one  of  these  con- 
flicts. Luther  sat  translating  one  of  the  psalms ;  he 
was  worn  down  with  long  labor,  with  sickness,  absti- 
nence from  food  :  there  rose  before  him  some  hideous 
indefinable  image,  which  he  took  for  the  evil  one,  to 
forbid  his  work  :  Luther  started  up,  with  fiend-defiance ; 
flung  his  inkstand  at  the  specter  and  it  disappeared  ! 
The  spot  still  remains  there  ;  a  curious  monument  of 
several  things.  Any  apothecary's  apprentice  can  now 
tell  us  what  we  are  to  think  of  this  apparition,  in  a 
scientific  sense  :  but  the  man's  heart  that  dare  rise  de- 
fiant, face  to  face,  against  hell  itself,  can  give  no 
higher  proof  of  fearlessness.  The  thing  he  will  quail 
before  exists  not  on  this  earth  or  under  it.  Fearless 
enough  !  "  The  devil  is  aware,"  writes  he  on  one  oc- 
casion, "  that  this  does  not  proceed  out  of  fear  in  me. 
I  have  seen  and  defied  innumerable  devils.  Duke 
George,  of  Leipzig,"  a  great  enemy  of  his,  "  Duke 
George  is  not  equal  to  one  devil " — far  short  of  a  devil ! 
"  If  I  had  business  at  Leipzig,  I  would  ride  into  Leipzig, 
though  it  rained  Duke  Georges  for  nine  days  running." 
What  a  reservoir  of  Dukes  to  ride  into ! 

At  the  same  time,  they  err  greatly  who  imagine  that 
this  man's  courage  was  ferocity,  mere  coarse  disobed- 
ient obstinacy  and  savagery,  as  many  do.  Far  from 
that.  There  may  be  an  absence  of  fear  which  arises 
from  the  absence  of  thought  or  affection,  from  the 
presence  of  hatred  and  stupid  fury.  We  do  not 


166  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

value  the  courage  of  the  tiger  highly!  "With  Luther 
it  was  far  otherwise ;  no  accusation  could  be 
more  unjust  than  this  of  mere  ferocious  violence 
brought  against  him.  A  most  gentle  heart  withal,  full 
of  pity  and  love,  as  indeed  the  truly  valiant  heart  ever 
is.  The  tiger  before  a  stronger  foe — flies  :  the  tiger  is 
not  what  we  call  valiant,  only  fierce  and  cruel.  I  know 
few  things  more  touching  than  those  soft  breathings  of 
affection,  soft  as  a  child's  or  a  mother's,  in  this  great 
wild  heart  of  Luther.  So  honest,  unadulterated  with 
any  cant;  homely,  rude  in  their  utterance;  pure  as 
water  welling  from  the  rock.  What,  in  fact,  was  all 
that  down-pressed  mood  of  despair  and  reprobation, 
Avhich  we  saw  in  his  youth,  but  the  outcome  of  pre- 
eminent thoughtful  gentleness,  affections  too  keen  and 
fine  ?  It  is  the  course  such  men  as  the  poor  poet  Cow- 
per  fall  into.  Luther  to  a  slight  observer  might  have 
seemed  a  timid,  weak  man ;  modesty,  affectionate 
shrinking  tenderness  the  chief  distinction  of  him.  It 
is  a  noble  valor  which  is  roused  in  a  heart  like  this, 
once  stirred  up  into  defiance,  all  kindled  into  a  heavenly 
blaze. 

In  Luther's  "  Table-Talk,"  a  posthumous  book  of 
anecdotes  and  sayings  collected  by  his  friends,  the  most 
interesting  now  of  all  the  books  proceeding  from  him, 
we  have  many  beautiful  unconscious  displays  of  the 
man  and  what  sort  of  nature  he  had.  His  behavior  at 
the  death-bed  of  his  little  daughter,  so  still,  so  great 
and  loving,  is  among  the  most  affecting  things.  He  is 
resigned  that  his  little  Magdalene  should  die,  yet  longs 
inexpressibly  that  she  might  live — follows,  in  awe- 
struck thought,  the  flight  of  her  little  soul  through 
those  unknown  realms.  Awestruck;  most  heartfelt, 
we  can  see ;  and  sincere — for  after  all  dogmatic  creeds 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  167 

and  articles,  he  feels  what  nothing  it  is  that  we  know, 
or  can  know  :  His  little  Magdalene  shall  be  with  God, 
as  God  wills ;  for  Luther  too  that  is  all ;  Islam  is 
all. 

Once,  he  looks  out  from  his  solitary  Patmos,  the 
castle  of  Coburg,  in  the  middle  of  the  night :  The 
great  vault  of  immensity,  long  flights  of  clouds  sailing 
through  it— dumb,  gaunt,  huge — who  supports  all  that  2 
"  None  ever  saw  the  pillars  of  it ;  yet  it  is  supported." 
God  supports  it.  We  must  know  that  God  is  great, 
that  God  is  good  ;  and  trust,  where  we  cannot  see. 
Returning  home  from  Leipzig  once,  he  is  struck  by  the 
beauty  of  the  harvest-fields :  How  it  stands,  that  golden 
yellow  corn,  on  its  fair  taper  stem,  its  golden  head 
bent,  all  rich  and  waving  there — the  meek  earth,  at 
God's  kind  bidding,  has  produced  it  once  again ;  the 
bread  of  man !  In  the  garden  at  Wittenberg  one 
evening  at  sunset,  a  little  bird  has  perched  for  the 
night :  That  little  bird,  says  Luther,  above  it  are  the 
stars  and  deep  heaven  of  worlds  ;  yet  it  has  folded  its 
little  wings ;  gone  trustfully  to  rest  there  as  in  its 
home :  the  Maker  of  it  has  given  it  too  a  home ! 
Neither  are  mirthful  turns  wanting :  there  is  a  great 
free  human  heart  in  this  man.  The  common  speech  of 
him  has  a  rugged  nobleness,  idiomatic,  expressive,  gen- 
uine ;  gleams  here  and  there  with  beautiful  poetic  tints. 
One  feels  him  to  be  a  great  brother  man.  His  love  of 
music,  indeed,  is  not  this,  as  it  were,  the  summary  of 
all  these  affections  in  him  ?  Many  a  wild  unutterability 
he  spoke  forth  from  him  in  the  tones  of  his  flute.  The 
devils  fled  from  his  flute,  he  says.  Death-defiance  on 
the  one  hand  and  such  love  of  music  on  the  other ;  I 
could  call  these  the  two  opposite  poles  of  a  great  soul ; 
between  these  two  all  great  things  had  room. 


1G8  LECTURES  ON  1IEROES. 

Luther's  face  is  to  me  expressive  of  him ;  in  Kran- 
ach's  best  portraits  I  find  the  true  Luther.  A  true 
plebeian  face  ;  with  its  huge  crag-like  brows  and  bones, 
the  emblem  of  rugged  energy  ;  at  first,  almost  a  repul- 
sive face.  Yet  in  the  eyes  especially  there  is  a  wild 
silent  sorrow  ;  an  unnamable  melancholy,  the  element 
of  all  gentle  and  fine  affections ;  giving  to  the  rest  the 
true  stamp  of  nobleness.  Laughter  was  in  this  Luther, 
as  we  said  ;.  but  tears  also  were  there.  Tears  also 
were  appointed  him ;  tears  and  hard  toil.  The  basis  of 
his  life  was  sadness,  earnestness.  In  his  latter  days, 
after  all  triumphs  and  victories,  he*  expresses  himself 
heartily  weary  of  living  ;  he  considers  that  God  alone 
can  and  will  regulate  the  course  things  are  taking  and 
that  perhaps  the  day  of  judgment  is  not  far.  As  for 
him,  he  longs  for  one  thing:  that  God  would  release 
him  from  his  labor  and  let  him  depart  and  be  at  rest. 
They  understand  little  of  the  man  who  cite  this  in  dis- 
credit of  him !  I  will  call  this  Luther  a  true  great 
man  ;  great  in  intellect,  in  courage,  affection  and  in- 
tegrity; one  of  our  most  lovable  and  precious  men. 
Great,  not  as  a  hewn  obelisk ;  but  as  an  Alpine  mount- 
ain— so  simple,  honest,  spontaneous,  not  setting  up  to 
be  great  at  all ;  there  for  quite  another  purpose  than 
being  great!  Ah  yes,  unsubduable  granite,  piercing 
far  and  wide  into  the  heavens ;  yet  in  the  clefts  of  it 
fountains,  green  beautiful  valleys  with  flowers!  A 
right  spiritual  hero  and  prophet;  once  more,  a  true 
son  of  nature  and  fact,  for  whom  these  centuries 
and  many  that  are  to  come  yet,  will  be  thankful  to 
heaven. 

The  most  interesting  phasis  which  the  reformation 
anywhere  assumes,  especially  for  us  English,  is  that  of 
Puritanism.  In  Luther's  own  country  Protestantism 


THE  &ERO  AS  PRIEST.  169 

Soon  dwindled  into  a  rather  barren  affair :  not  a  relig- 
ion or  faith,  but  rather  now  a  theological  jangling  of 
argument,  the  proper  seat  of  it  not  the  heart ;  the  es- 
sence of  it  skeptical  contension:  which  indeed  has 
jangled  more  and  more,  down  to  Yoltaireism  itself — 
through  Gustavus-Adolphus  contentions  onward  to 
French  revolution  ones !  But  in  our  island  there  arose 
a  Puritanism,  which  even  got  itself  established  as  a 
Presbyterianism  and  national  church  among  the 
Scotch ;  which  carne  forth  as  a  real  business  of  the 
heart ;  and  has  produced  in  the  world  very  notable 
fruit.  In  some  senses,  one  may  say  it  is  the  only 
phasis  of  Protestantism  that  ever  got  to  the  rank  of 
being  a  faith,  a  true  heart-communication  with  heaven 
and  of  exhibiting  itself  in  history  as  such.  We  must 
spare  a  few  words  for  Knox  ;  himself  a  brave  and  re- 
markable man ;  but  still  more  important  as  chief  priest 
and  founder,  which  one  may  consider  him  to  be,  of  the 
faith  that  became  Scotland's,  New  England's,  Oliver 
Cromwell's.  History  will  have  something  to  say  about 
this,  for  some  time  to  come ! 

"We  may  censure  Puritanism  as  we  please ;  and  no 
one  of  us,  I  suppose,  but  would  find  it  a  very  rough  de- 
fective thing.  But  we  and  all  men,  may  understand 
that  it  was  a  genuine  thing ;  for  nature  has  adopted  it 
and  it  has  grown  and  grows.  I  say  sometimes,  that 
all  goes  by  wager-of-battle  in  this  world  ;  that  strength, 
well  understood,  is  the  measure  of  all  worth.  Give  a 
thing  time  ;  if  it  can  succeed,  it  is  a  right  thing.  Look 
now  at  American  Saxondom ;  and  at  that  little  fact  of 
the  sailing  of  the  Mayflower,  two  hundred  years  ago, 
from  Delft  haven  in  Holland !  Were  we  of  open 
sense  as  the  Greeks  were,  we  had  found  a  poem  here  ; 
one  of  nature's  own  poems,  such  as  she  writes  in  broad 


1  ^0  L  KCTURfiS  Oft 

facts  over  great  continents.  For  it  was  properly  the 
beginning  of  America :  there  were  straggling  settlers 
in  America  before,  some  material  as  of  a  body  was 
there ;  but  the  soul  of  it  was  first  this.  These  poor 
men,  driven  out  of  their  own  country,  not  able  well 
to  live  in  Holland,  determine  on  settling  in  the  New 
World.  Black  untamed  forests  are  there  and  wild 
savage  creatures ;  but  not  so  cruel  as  star-chamber 
hangmen.  They  thought  the  earth  would  yield  them 
food,  if  they  tilled  honestly ;  the  everlasting  heaven 
would  stretch,  there  too,  overhead ;  they  should  be 
left  in  peace,  to  prepare  for  eternity  by  living  well  in 
this  world  of  time ;  worshiping  in  what  they  thought 
the  true,  not  the  idolatrous  way.  They  clubbed  their 
small  means  together ;  hired  a  ship,  the  little  ship  May- 
flower and  made  ready  to  set  sail. 

In  deal's  "  History  of  the  Puritans  "*  is  an  account 
of  the  ceremony  of  their  departure :  solemnity,  we 
might  call  it  rather,  for  it  was  a  real  act  of  worship. 
Their  minister  went  down  with  them  to  the  beach,  and 
their  brethren  whom  they  were  to  leave  behind ;  all 
joined  in  solemn  prayer,  That  God  would  have  pity  on 
His  poor  children,  and  go  with  them  into  that  waste 
wilderness,  for  He  also  had  made  that,  He  was  there 
also  as  well  as  here.  Hah !  These  men,  I  think,  had 
a  work !  The  weak  thing,  weaker  than  a  child,  be- 
comes strong  one  day,  if  it  be  a  true  thing.  Puritan- 
ism was  only  despicable,  laughable  then ;  but  nobody 
can  manage  to  laugh  at  it  now.  Puritanism  has  got 
weapons  and  sinews ;  it  has  fire-arms,  war-navies ;  it 
has  cunning  in  its  ten  fingers,  strength  in  its  right 
arm  ;  it  can  steer  ships,  fell  forests,  remove  mountains 

*Neal  (London,  1755),  i.  490. 


THE  HERO  AS  PRfEST.  171 

— it  is  one  of  the  strongest  things  under  the  sun  at 
present ! 

In  the  history  of  Scotland,  too,  I  can  find  properly 
but  one  epoch :  we  may  say,  it  contains  nothing  of 
world-interest  at  all  but  this  reformation  by  Knox.  A 
poor  barren  country,  full  of  continual  broils,  dissen- 
sions, massacrings  ;  a  people  in  the  last  state  of  rude- 
ness and  destitution,  little  better  perhaps  than  Ireland 
at  this  day.  Hungry  fierce  barons,  not  so  much  as 
able  to  form  any  arrangement  with  each  other  how  to 
divide  what  they  fleeced  from  these  poor  drudges  ;  but 
obliged,  as  the  Columbian  republics  are  at  this  day,  to 
make  of  every  alteration  a  revolution  ;  no  way  of 
changing  a  ministry  but  by  hanging  the  old  ministers 
on  gibbets :  this  is  a  historical  spectacle  of  no  very 
singular  significance  !  "  Bravery  "  enough,  I  doubt 
not ;  fierce  fighting  in  abundance :  but  not  braver  or 
fiercer  than  that  of  their  old  Scandinavian  sea-king 
ancestors ;  whose  exploits  we  have  not  found  worth 
dwelling  on !  It  is  a  country  as  yet  without  a  soul : 
nothing  developed  in  it  but  what  is  rude,  external, 
semi-animal.  And  now  at  the  reformation,  the  inter- 
nal life  is  kindled,  as  it  were,  under  the  ribs  of  this 
outward  material  death.  A  cause,  the  noblest  of 
causes  kindles  itself,  like  a  beacon  set  on  high ;  high 
as  heaven,  }Tet  attainable  from  earth— whereby  the 
meanest  man  becomes  not  a  citizen  only,  but  a  member 
of  Christ's  visible  church  ;  a  veritable  hero,  if  he  prove 
a  true  man ! 

"Well ;  this  is  what  I  mean  by  a  whole  "  nation  of 
heroes  ;  "  a  believing  nation.  There  needs  not  a  great 
soul  to  make  a  hero ;  there  needs  a  god-creatured  soul 
which  will  be  true  to  its  origin;  that  will  be  a  great 
soul !  The  like  has  been  seen,  we  find.  The  like  will 


172  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

be  again  seen,  under  wider  forms  than  the  Presbyte- 
rian :  there  can  be  no  lasting  good  done  till  then. 
Impossible  !  say  some.  Possible  ?  Has  it  not  been,  in 
this  world,  as  a  practiced  fact  ?  Did  hero-worship  fail 
in  Knox's  case  ?  Or  are  we  made  of  other  clay  now  ? 
Did  the  Westminster  confession  of  faith  add  some  new 
property  to  the  soul  of  man  ?  God  made  the  soul  of 
man.  He  did  not  doom  any  soul  of  man  to  live  as  a 
hypothesis  and  hearsay,  in  a  world  filled  with  such, 
and  with  the  fatal  work  and  fruit  of  such  ! 

But  to  return:  this  that  Knoxdid  for  his  nation,  I  say, 
we  may  really  call  a  resurrection  as  from  death.  It  was 
not  a  smooth  business  ;  but  it  was  welcome  surely,  and 
cheap  at  that  price,  had  it  been  far  rougher.  On  the 
whole,  cheap  at  any  price — as  life  is.  The  people 
began  to  live :  they  needed  first  of  all  to  do  that,  at 
what  cost  and  costs  soever.  Scotch  literature  and 
thought,  Scotch  industry  ;  James  Watt,  David  Hume, 
Walter  Scott,  Robert  Burns :  I  find  Knox  and 
the  reformation  acting  in  the  heart's  core  of  every  one 
of  these  persons  and  phenomena ;  I  find  that  without 
the  reformation  they  would  not  have  been.  Or  what 
of  Scotland  ?  The  Puritanism  of  Scotland  became  that 
of  England,  of  New  England.  A  tumult  in  the  high 
church  of  Edinburgh  spread  into  a  universal  battle  and 
struggle  over  all  these  realms — there  came  out,  after 
fifty  years  struggling,  what  we  call  the  "glorious  rev- 
olution," a  habeas  corpus  act,  free  parliaments,  and 
much  else  !  Alas,  is  it  not  too  true  what  we  said,  That 
many  men  in  the  van  do  always,  like  Russian  soldiers 
march  into  the  ditch  of  Schweidnitz,and  fill  it  up  with 
their  dead  bodies,  that  the  rear  may  pass  over  them 
dry-shod,  and  gain  the  honor?  How  many  earnest 
rugged  Crom wells,  Knoxes,  poor  peasant  covenanters, 


TUW  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  1*3 

wrestling,  battling  for  very  life,  in  rough  miry  places, 
have  to  struggle,  and  suffer,  and  fall,  greatly  censured, 
bemired — before  a  beautiful  revolution  of  eighty-eight 
can  step  over  them  in  official  pumps  and  silk  stockings, 
with  universal  three-times-three  I 

It  seems  to  me  hard  measure  that  this  Scottish  man, 
now  after  three  hundred  years,  should  have  to  plead 
like  a  culprit  before  the  world  ;  intrinsically  for  having 
been,  in  such  way  as  it  was  then  possible  to  be,  the 
bravest  of  all  Scotchmen !  Had  he  been  a  poor  half- 
and-half,  he  could  have  crouched  into  the  corner,  like 
so  many  others  ;  Scotland  had  not  been  delivered ; 
and  Knox  had  been  without  blame.  He  is  the  one 
Scotchman  to  whom,  of  all  others,  his  country  and  the 
world  owe  a  debt.  He  has  to  plead  that  Scotland 
would  forgive  him  for  having  been  worth  to  it  any 
million  "  unblamable "  Scotchmen  that  need  no  for- 
giveness !  He  bared  his  breast  to  the  battle ;  had  to 
row  in  French  galleys,  wander  forlorn  in  exile,  in 
clouds  and  storms  ;  was  censured,  shot  at  through  his 
windows;  had  a  right  sore  fighting  life  :  if  this  world 
were  his  place  of  recompense,  he  had  made  but  a  bad 
venture  of  it.  I  cannot  apologize  for  Knox.  To  him 
it  is  very  indifferent,  there  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
or  more,  what  men  say  of  him.  But  we,  having  got 
above  all  those  details  of  his  battle,  and  living  now  in 
clearness  on  the  fruits  of  his  victory,  we  for  our 
own  sake,  ought  too  look  through  the  rumors  and 
controversies  enveloping  the  man,  into  the  man  him- 
self. 

For  one  thing,  I  will  remark  that  this  post  of  prophet 
to  his  nation  was  not  of  his  seeking ;  Knox  had  lived 
forty  years  quietly  obscure,  before  he  become  conspicu- 
ous. He  was  the  son  of  poor  parents;  had  got  a  col- 


174  LECTURES  ON  IlKHOES. 

lege  education  ;  become  a  priest ;  adopted  the  refor- 
mation, and  seemed  well  content  to  guide  his  own  steps 
by  the  light  of  it,  nowise  unduly  intruding  it  on  others. 
He  had  lived  as  tutor  in  gentlemen's  families ;  preach- 
ing when  any  body  of  persons  wished  to  hear  his  doc- 
trine :  resolute  he  to  walk  by  the  truth,  and  speak  the 
truth  when  called  to  do  it ;  not  ambitious  of  more ; 
not  fancying  himself  capable  of  more.  In  this  entirely 
obscure  way  he  had  reached  the  age  of  forty;  was 
with  the  small  body  of  reformers  who  were  standing 
siege  in  St.  Andrew's  castle — when  one  day  in  their 
chapel,  the  preacher  after  finishing  his  exhortation  to 
these  fighters  in  the  forlorn  hope,  said  suddenly  :  That 
there  ought  to  be  other  speakers,  that  all  men  who  had 
a  priest's  heart  and  gift  in  them  ought  now  to  speak — 
which  gifts  and  heart  one  of  their  number,  John  Knox 
the  name  of  him,  had  :  Had  he  not?  said  the  preacher, 
appealing  to  all  the  audience :  what  then  is  his  duty  ? 
The  people  answered  affirmatively ;  it  was  a  criminal 
forsaking  of  his  post,  if  such  a  man  held  the  word  that 
was  in  him  silent.  Poor  Knox  was  obliged  to  stand 
up ;  he  attempted  to  reply ;  he  could  say  no  word — 
burst  into  a  flood  of  tears  and  ran  out.  It  is  worth 
remembering,  that  scene.  He  was  in  grievous  trouble 
for  some  days.  He  felt  what  a  small  faculty  was  his 
for  this  great  work.  He  felt  what  a  baptism  he 
was  called  to  be  baptised  withal.  He  "  burst  into 
tears." 

Our  primary  characteristic  of  a  hero,  that  he  is  sin- 
cere, applies  emphatically  to  Knox.  It  is  not  denied 
anywhere  that  this,  whatever  might  be  his  other  quali- 
ties or  faults,  is  among  the  truest  of  men.  With  a 
singular  instinct  he  holds  to  the  truth  and  fact ;  the 
truth  alone  is  there  for  him,  the  rest  a  mere  shadow 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIKST.  175 

and  deceptive  nonentity.  However  feeble,  forlorn  the 
reality  may  seem,  on  that  and  that  only  can  he  take 
his  stand.  In  the  galleys  of  the  River  Loire,  whither 
Knox  and  the  others,  after  their  castle  of  St.  Andrew's 
was  taken,  had  been  sent  as  galley-slaves — some  officer 
or  priest,  one  day  presented  them  an  image  of  the 
Virgin  Mother,  requiring  that  they,  the  blasphemous 
heretics,  should  do  it  reverence.  Mother  ?  Mother  of 
God  ?  said  Knox,  when  the  turn  came  to  him :  This  is 
no  mother  of  God:  this  is  "a  pented  firedd"—&  piece 
of  wood,  I  tell  you,  with  paint  on  it !  She  is  fitter  for 
swimming,  I  think,  than  for  being  worshiped,  added 
Knox  ;  and  flung  the  thing  into  the  river.  It  was  not 
very  cheap  jesting  there :  but  come  of  it  what  might, 
this  thing  to  Knox  was  and  must  continue  nothing 
other  than  the  real  truth  ;  it  was  a,  pented  bredd:  wor- 
ship it  he  would  not. 

He  told  his  fellow-prisoners,  in  this  darkest  time,  to 
be  of  courage ;  the  cause  they  had  was  the  true  one 
and  must  and  would  prosper ;  the  whole  world  could 
not  put  it  down.  Reality  is  of  God's  making;  it  is 
alone  strong.  How  many  pented  breddsr  pretending 
to  be  real,  are  fitter  to  swim  than  to  be  worshiped ! 
This  Knox  cannot  live  but  by  fact :  he  clings  to  reality 
as  the  shipwrecked  sailor  to  the  cliff.  He  is  an  in- 
stance to  us  how  a  man,  by  sincerity  itself,  becomes 
heroic :  it  is  the  grand  gift  he  has.  We  find  in  Knox 
a  good  honest  intellectual  talent,  no  transcendent  one 
— a  narrow,  inconsiderable  man,  as  compared  with 
Luther  :  but  in  heartfelt  instinctive  adherence  to  truth, 
in  sincerity,  as  we  say,  he  has  no  superio'r ;  nay,  one 
might  ask,  "  What  equal  he  has  ?  "  The  heart  of  him 
is  of  the  true  prophet  cast.  "  He  lies  there,"  said  the 
Earl  of  Morton  at  his  grave,  "  who  never  feared  the 


176  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

face  of  man."  He  resembles,  more  than  any  of  the 
moderns,  an  old  Hebrew  prophet.  The  same  inflexi- 
bility, intolerance,  rigid  narrow-looking  adherence  to 
God's  truth,  stern  rebuke  in  the  name  of  God  to  all 
that  forsake  truth:  an  old  Hebrew  prophet  in  the 
guise  of  an  Edinburgh  minister  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. We  are  to  take  him  for  that ;  not  require  him 
to  be  other. 

Knox's  conduct  to  Queen  Mary,  the  harsh  visits  he 
used  to  make  in  her  own  palace,  to  reprove  her  there, 
have  been  much  commented  upon.  Such  cruelty,  such 
coarseness  fills  us  with  indignation.  On  reading  the 
actual  narrative  of  the  business,  what  Knox  said  and 
what  Knox  meant,  I  must  say  one's  tragic  feeling  is 
rather  disappointed.  They  are  not  so  coarse,  these 
speeches ;  they  seem  to  me  about  as  fine  as  the  cir- 
cumstances would  permit !  Knox  was  not  there  to  do 
the  courtier ;  he  came  on  another  errand.  "Whoever, 
reading  these  colloquies  of  his  with  the  queen,  thinks 
they  are  vulgar  insolences  of  a  plebeian  priest  to  a  deli- 
cate high  lady,  mistakes  the  purport  and  essence  of 
them  altogether.  It  was  unfortunately  not  possible  to 
be  polite  with  the  Queen  of  Scotland,  unless  one 
proved  untrue  to  the  nation  and  cause  of  Scotland.  A 
man  who  did  not  wish  to  see  the  land  of  his  birth 
made  a  hunting-field  for  intriguing  ambitious  guises 
and  the  cause  of  God  trampled  underfoot  of  falsehoods, 
formulas  and  the  devil's  cause,  had  no  method  of  mak- 
himself  agreeable!  "Better  that  women  weep,"  said 
Morton,  "  than  that  bearded  men  be  forced  to  weep." 
Knox  was  the  constitutional  opposition-party  in  Scot- 
land :  the  nobles  of  the  country,  called  by  their  station  to 
take  that  post,  were  not  found  in  it ;  Knox  had  to  go, 
or  no  one.  The  hapless  queen — but  the  still  more  hap- 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  177 

less  country,  if  she  were  made  happy !  Mary  herself 
was  not  without  sharpness  enough,  among  her  other 
qualities :  "  Who  are  you,"  said  she  once,  "  that  pre- 
sume to  school  the  nobles  and  sovereign  of  this  realm  ? " 
"Madam,  a  subject  born  within  the  same,"  answered 
he.  Eeasonably  answered!  If  the  "subject"  have 
truth  to  speak,  it  is  not  the  "  subject's  "  footing  that 
will  fail  him  here. 

"We  blame  Knox  for  his  intolerance.  Well,  surely  it 
is  good  that  each  of  us  be  as  tolerant  as  possible.  Yet, 
at  bottom,  after  all  the  talk  there  is  and  has  been  about 
it,  what  is  tolerance  ?  Tolerance  has  to  tolerate  the 
^essential ;  and  to  see  well  what  that  is.  Tolerance 
has  to  be  noble,  measured,  just  in  its  very  wrath,  when 
it  can  tolerate  no  longer.  But,  on  the  whole,  we  are 
not  altogether  here  to  tolerate !  We  are  here  to  resist, 
to  control  and  vanquish  withal.  We  do  not "  tolerate" 
falsehoods,  thieveries,  iniquities,  when  they  fasten  on 
us  ;  we  say  to  them,  Thou  art  false,  thou  art  not  toler- 
able !  We  are  here  to  extinguish  falsehoods  and  put 
an  end  to  them,  in  some  wise  way  !  I  will  not  quarrel 
so  much  with  the  way ;  the  doing  of  the  thing  is  our 
great  concern.  In  this  sense  Knox  was,  full  surely, 
intolerant. 

A  man  sent  to  row  in  French  galleys  and  suchlike, 
for  teaching  the  truth  in  his  own  land,  cannot  always 
be  in  the  mildest  humor !  I  am  not  prepared  to  say 
that  Knox  had  a  soft  temper  ;  nor  do  I  know  that  he 
had  what  we  call  an  ill-temper.  An  ill-nature  he 
decidedly  had  not.  Kind  honest  affections  dwelt  in 
the  much-enduring,  hard -worn,  ever-battling  man. 
That  he  could  rebuke  queens  and  had  such  weight 
among  those  proud  turbulent  nobles,  proud  enough 
\yhatever  else  they  were;  and  coukl  mainta.in  to  the, 


178  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

end  a  kind  of  virtual  presidency  and  sovereignty  in 
that  wild  realm,  he  who  was  only  "  a  subject  born 
within  the  same :"  this  of  itself  will  prove  to  us  that  he 
was  found,  close  at  hand,  to  be  no  mean  acrid  man  ; 
but  at  heart  a  healthful,  strong,  sagacious  man.  Such 
alone  can  bear  rule  in  that  kind.  They  blame  him  for 
pulling  down  cathedrals  and  so  forth,  as  if  he  were  a 
seditious  rioting  demagogue :  precisely  the  reverse  is 
seen  to  be  the  fact,  in  regard  to  cathedrals  and  the 
rest  of  it,  if  we  examine !  Knox  wanted  no  pulling 
down  of  stone  edifices ;  he  wanted  leprosy  and  dark- 
ness to  be  thrown  out  of  the  lives  of  men.  Tumult 
was  not  his  element ;  it  was  the  tragic  feature  of  his 
life  that  he  was  forced  to  dwell  so  much  in  that. 
Every  such  man  is  the  born  enemy  of  disorder  ;  hates 
to  be  in  it:  but  what  then?  Smooth  falsehood  is  not 
order  ;  it  is  the  general  sum  total  of  border.  Order 
is  truth — each  thing  standing  on  the  basis  that  belongs 
to  it :  order  and  falsehood  cannot  subsist  together. 

Withal,  unexpectedly  enough,  this  Knox  has  a  vein 
of  drollery  in  him ;  which  I  like  much,  in  combination 
with  his  other  qualities.  He  has  a  true  eye  for  the 
ridiculous.  His  history,  with  its  rough  earnestness,  is 
curiously  enlivened  with  this.  When  the  two  prelates, 
entering  Glasgow  cathedral,  quarrel  about  precedence ; 
march  rapidly  up,  take  to  hustling  one  another,  twitch- 
ing one  another's  rochets  and  at  last  flourishing  their 
crosiers  like  quarter-staves,  it  is  a  great  sight  for  him 
everyway !  Not  mockery,  scorn,  bitterness  alone ; 
though  there  is  enough  of  that  too.  But  a  true,  loving, 
illuminating  laugh  mounts  up  over  the  earnest  visage ; 
not  a  loud  laugh ;  you  would  say,  a  laugh  in  the  eyes 
most  of  all.  An  honest-hearted,  brotherly  man ; 
brother  to  the  high,  brother  also  to  the  low ;  sincere 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  179 

in  his  sympathy  with  both.  He  had  his  pipe  of  Bour 
deaux  too,  we  find,  in  that  old  Edinburgh  house  of  his: 
a  cheery  social  man,  with  faces  that  loved  him !  They 
go  far  wrong  who  think  this  Knox  was  a  gloomy, 
spasmodic,  shrieking  fanatic.  Not  at  all :  he  is  one  of 
the  solidest  of  men.  Practical,  cautious-hopeful 
patient;  a  most  shrewd,  observing,  quietly  discerning 
man.  In  fact,  he  has  very  much  the  type  of  character 
we  assign  to  the  Scotch  at  present ;  a  certain  sardonic 
taciturnity  is  in  him ;  insight  enough ;  and  a  stouter 
heart  than  he  himself  knows  of.  He  has  the  power  of 
holding  his  peace  over  many  things  which  do  not  vitally 
concern  him  —  "They?  what  are  they?"  But  the 
thing  which  does  vitally  concern  him,  that  thing  he 
will  speak  of ;  and  in  a  tone  the  whole  world  shall  be 
made  to  hear:  all  the  more  emphatic  for  his  long 
silence. 

This  prophet  of  the  Scotch  is  to  me  no  hateful  man ! 
He  had  a  sore  fight  of  an  existence :  wrestling  with 
popes  and  principalities ;  in  defeat,  contention,  life-long 
struggle ;  rowing  as  a  galley-slave,  wandering  as  an 
exile.  A  sore  fight :  but  he  won  it.  "  Have  you  hope  ?" 
they  asked  him  in  his  last  moment,  when  he  could  no 
longer  speak.  He  lifted  his  finger,  "  pointed  upward 
with  his  finger,"  and  so  died.  Honor  to  him!  His 
works  have  not  died.  The  letter  of  his  work  dies,  as 
of  all  men's ;  but  the  spirit  of  it  never. 

One  word  more  as  to  the  letter  of  Knox's  work. 
The  unforgivable  offense  in  him  is,  that  he  wished  to 
set  up  priests  over  the  head  of  kings.  In  other  words, 
he  strove  to  make  the  government  of  Scotland  a  the- 
ocracy. This  indeed  is  properly  the  sum  of  his  offeses, 
the  essential  sin  ;  for  which  what  pardon  can  there  be? 
It  is  most  true,  he  did,  at  bottom,  consciously  or  uncon? 


180  LECTURES  ON  HKROES. 

sciously,  mean  a  theocracy,  or  government  of  God. 
He  did  mean  that  kings  and  prime  ministers,  and  all 
manner  of  persons,  in  public  or  private,  diplomatizing 
or  whatever  else  they  might  be  doing,  should  walk 
according  to  the  gospel  of  Christ,  and  understand  that 
this  was  their  law,  supreme  over  all  laws.  He  hoped 
once  to  see  such  a  thing  realized;  and  the  petition, 
thy  kingdom  come,  no  longer  an  empty  word.  He 
was  sore  grieved  when  he  saw  greedy  worldly  barons 
clutch  hold  of  the  church's  property  ;  when  he  expost- 
ulated that  it  was  not  secular  property,  that  it  was 
spiritual  property,  and  should  be  turned  to  true  churchly 
uses,  education,  schools,  worship; — and  the  Regent 
Murray  had  to  answer,  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders: 
"  It  is  a  devout  imagination !"  This  was  Knox's  scheme 
of  right  and  truth  ;  this  he  zealously  endeavored  after, 
to  realize  it.  If  we  think  his  scheme  of  truth  was  too 
narrow,  was  not  true,  we  may  rejoice  that  he  could 
not  realize  it ;  that  it  remained  after  two  centuries  of 
effort,  unrealizable,  and  is  a  "devout  imagination"  still. 
But  how  shall  we  blame  him  for  struggling  to  realize  it  ? 
Theocracy  government  of  God,  is  precisely  the  thing  to 
be  struggled  for !  All  prophets,  zealous  priests ,  are  there 
for  that  purpose.  Hildebrand  wished  a  theocracy  ; 
Cromwell  wished  it,  fought  for  it ;  Mahomet  attained 
it.  Nay,  is  it  not  what  all  zealous  men,  whether 
prophets,  whatsoever  else  called,  do  essentially  wish 
and  must  wish  ?  That  right  and  truth  or  God's  law, 
reign  supreme  among  men,  this  is  the  heavenly  ideal 
(well  named  in  Knox's  time,  and  namable  in  all  times,  a 
revealed  "  will  of  God")  toward  which  the  reformer 
will  insist  that  all  be  more  and  more  approximated. 
All  true  reformers,  as  I  said,  are  by  the  nature  of  them 
priests,  and  strive  for  a  theocracy.  How  far  such 


THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST.  181 

ideals  can  ever  be  introduced  into  practice,  and  at 
what  point  our  impatience  with  their  non-introduction 
ought  to  begin,  is  always  a  question  I  think  we  may 
say  safely,  Let  them  introduce  themselves  as  far  as 
they  can  contrive  to  do  it !  If  they  are  the  true 
faith  of  men,  all  men  ought  to  be  more  or  less 
impatient  always  where  they  are  not  found  intro- 
duced. There  will  never  be  wanting  Regent  Murrays 
enough  to  shrug  their  shoulders,  and  say,  "A  de- 
vout imagination ! "  We  will  praise  the  hero  priest 
rather,  who  does  what  is  in  him  to  bring  them  in ;  and 
wears  out,  in  toil,  calumny,  contradiction,  a  noble  life, 
to  make  a  God's  kingdom  of  this  earth.  The  earth 
will  not  become  too  godlike ! 


183  LECTURES  ON  UE110ES. 


LECTUEE  Y .* 

THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS — JOHNSON,  ROUSSEAU,  BURNS. 

HERO  GODS,  prophets,  poets,  priests  are  forms  of  hero- 
ism that  belong  to  the  old  ages,  make  their  appear- 
ance in  the  remotest  times ;  s6me  of  them  have  ceased 
to  be  possible  long  since,  and  cannot  any  more  show 
themselves  in  this  world.  The  hero  as  man  of  letters, 
again,  of  which  class  we  are  to  speak  to-day,  is  alto- 
gether a  product  of  these  new  ages ;  and  so  long  as  the 
wondrous  art  of  writing,  or  of  ready-writing  which  we 
call  printing,  subsists,  he  may  be  expected  to  continue, 
as  one  of  the  main  forms  of  heroism  for  all  future  ages. 
He  is,  in  various  respects,  a  very  singular  phenomenon. 

He  is  new,  I  say ;  he  has  hardly  lasted  above  a  cent- 
ury in  the  world  yet.  Never,  till  about  a  hundred- 
years  ago,  was  there  seen  any  fignre  of  a  great  soul 
living  apart  in  that  anomalous  manner ;  endeavoring 
to  speak-forth  the  inspiration  that  was  in  him  by 
printed  books,  and  find  place  and  subsistence  by 
what  the  world  would  please  to  give  him  for  doing  that. 
Much  had  been  sold  and  bought,  and  left  to  make  its 
own  bargain  in  the  market-place  ;  but  the  inspired  wis- 
dom of  a  heroic  soul  never  till  then,  in  that  naked  man- 
ner. He,  with  his  copy-rights  and  copy-wrongs, 
in  his  squalid  garret,  in  his  rusty  coat;  ruling  (for  this 
is  what  he  does),  from  his  grave,  after  death,  whole  na- 

*Delivered  Tuesday,  May  19,  J84Q, 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  ] 83 

tions  and  generations  who  would,  or  would  not  give- 
him  bread  while  living — is  a  rather  curious  spectacle  ! 
Few  shapes  of  heroism  can  be  more  unexpected. 

Alas,  the  hero  from  of  old  has  had  to  cramp  him- 
self into  strange  shapes :  the  world  knows  not  well  at 
any  time  what  to  do  with  him,  so  foreign  is  his  aspect 
in  the  world !  It  seemed  absurd  to  us,  that  men,  in 
their  rude  admiration,  should  take  some  wise  great 
Odin  for  a  god,  and  worship  him  as  such ;  some  wise  great 
Mahomet  for  one  god-inspired,  and  religiously  follow 
his  law  for  twelve  centuries :  but  that  a  wise  great  John- 
son, a  Burns,  a  Rousseau,  should  be  taken  for  some  idle 
nondescript,  extant  in  the  world  to  amuse  idleness, 
and  have  a  few  coins  and  applauses  thrown  him,  that 
he  might  live  thereby  ;  this  perhaps,  as  before  hinted, 
will  one  day  seem  a  still  absurd er  phasis  of  things ! 
Meanwhile,  since  it  is  the  spiritual  always  that  deter 
mines  the  material,  this  same  man-of- letters  hero  must 
be  regarded  as  our  most  important  modern  person. 
He,  such  as  he  may  be,  is  the  soul  of  all.  What  he 
teaches,  the  whole  world  will  do  and  make.  The 
world's  manner  of  dealing  with  him  is  the  most  sig- 
nifiant  feature  of  the  world's  general  position.  Looking 
well  at  his  life,  we  may  get  a  glance,  as  deep  as  is 
readily  possible  for  us,  into  the  life  of  those  singular 
centuries  which  have  produced  him,  in  which  we  our- 
selves live  and  work. 

There  are  genuine  men  of  letters,  and  not  genuine ; 
as  in  every  kind  there  in  a  genuine  and  a  spurious.  If 
hero  be  taken  to  mean  genuine,  then  I  say  the  hero  as 
man  of  letters  will  be  found  discharging  a  function  for 
us  which  is  ever  honorable,  ever  the  highest;  and 
was  once  well  known  to  be  the  highest.  He  is  uttering 
forth  in  such  way  as  he  has,  the  inspired  soul  of  him  j 


184  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

all  that  a  man  in  any  case,  can  do.  I  say  inspired  ;  for 
what  we  call  "originality,"  "sincerity,"  "genius,"  the 
heroic  quality  we  have  no  good  name  for,  signifies 

Jbbat.  The  hero  is  he  who  lives  in  the  inward  sphere 
of  things,  in  the  true,  divine  and  eternal,  which  exists 
always,  unseen  to  most,  under  the  temporary,  trivial : 
his  being  is  in  that ;  he  declares  that  abroad,  by  act  or 
speech  as  it  may  be,  in  declaring  himself  abroad.  His 
life,  as  we  said  before,  is  a  piece  of  the  everlasting 
heart  of  nature  herself :  all  men's  life  is — but  the  weak 
many  know  not  the  fact,  and  are  untrue  to  it,  in  most 
times ;  the  strong  few  are  strong,  heroic,  perennial,  be- 
cause it  cannot  be  hidden  from  them.  The  man  of 
letters,  like  every  hero,  is  there  to  proclaim  this  in  such 
sort  as  he  can.  Intrinsically  it  is  the  same  function 
which  the  old  generations  named  a  man  prophet, 
priest,  divinity  for  doing  :  which  all  manner  of  heroes, 

^J^speech  or  by  act,  are  sent  into  the  world  to  do. 

Fichte  the  German  philosopher  delivered,  some  forty 
years  ago  at  Erlangen,  a  highly  remarkable  course  of 
lectures  on  this  subject :  "  Ueber  das  wesen  des  GeleJirten, 
On  the  nature  of  the  literary  man."  Fichte,  in  con- 
formity with  the  transcendental  philosophy,  of  which 
he  was  a  distinguished  teacher,  declares  first :  That  all 
things  which  we  see  or  work  with  in  this  earth,  especi- 
ally we  ourselves  and  all  persons,  are  as  a  kind  of  vest- 
ure or  sensuous  appearance :  that  under  all  there  lies, 
as  the  essence  of  them,  what  he  calls  the  "divine  idea 
of  the  world  ;"  this  is  the  reality  which  "  lies  at  the  bot- 
tom of  all  appearance."  To  the  mass  of  men  no  such 
divine  idea  is  recognizable  in  the  world ;  they  live 
mearly,  says  Fichte,  among  the  superficialities,  prac- 
ticalities and  shows  of  the  world,  not  dreaming  that 
there  is  anything  divine  under  them,  But  the  man  of 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.      185 

letters  is  sent  hither  specially  that  he  may  discern  for 
himself,  and  make  manifest  to  us,  this  same  divine  idea  : 
in  every  new  generation  in  will  manifest  itself  in  a  new 
dialect ;  and  he  is  there  for  the  purpose  of  doing  that. 
Such  is  Fichte's  phraseology ;  with  which  we  need  not 
quarrel.  It  is  his  way  of  naming  what  I  here,  .by 
other  words,  am  striving  imperfectly  to  name  ;  what 
there  tfe-at  present  no  name  for:  The  unspeakable 
divine  significance,  full  of  splendor,  of  wonder  and  ter- 
ror, that  lies  in  the  being  of  every  man,  of  every  thing 
— the  presence  of  the  God  who  made  every  man  and 
thing.  Mahomet  taught  this  in  his  dialect;  Odin  in 
his :  it  is  the  thing  which  all  thinking  hearts  in  one 
dialect  or  another,  are  here  to  teach. 

Fichte  calls  the  man  of  letters,  therefore,  a  prophet, 
or  as  he  prefers  to  phrase  it,  a  priest,  continually  un- 
folding the  godlike  to  men  :  men  of  letters  are  a  per- 
petual priesthood,  from  age  to  age,  teaching  all  men 
that  a  God  is  still  present  in  their  life ;  that  all  "appear- 
ance," whatsoever  we  see  in  the  world,  is  but  as  a 
vesture  for  the  "  divine  idea  of  the  world, "  for  "  that 
which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  appearance."  In  the  true 
literary  man  there  is  thus  ever,  acknowleged  or  not  by 
the  world,  a  sacred  ness :  he  is  the  light  of  the  world  ;  the 
world's  priest :  guiding  it,  like  a  sacred  pillar  of  fire,  in  its 
dark  pilgrimage  through  the  waste  of  time.  Fichte 
discriminates  with  sharp  zeal  the  true  literary  man, 
what  we  here  call  the  hero  as  man  of  letters,  from 
multitudes  of  false  unheroic.  Whoever  lives  not 
wholly  in  this  divine  idea,  or  living  partially  in  it,  strug- 
gles not,  as  for  the  one  good,  to  live  wholly  in  it — he 
is,  let  him  live  where  else  he  like,  in  what  pomps  and 
prosperities  he  like,  no  literary  man  ;  he  is,  says  Fichte,  a 
"bungler,  stumper"  Or  at  best,  if  he  belong  to  the 


186  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

prosaic  provinces,  he  may  be  a  "Hodman  ;"  Fichte  even 
calls  him  elsewhere  a  "nonentity, "  and  has  in  short  no 
mercy  for  him,  no  wish  that  he  should  continue  happy 
among  us  !  This  is  Fichte's  notion  of  the  man  of  letters. 
It  means,  in  its  own  form,  precisely  what  we  here  mean. 

In  this  point  of  view,  I  consider  that  for  the  last 
hundred  years,  by  far  the  notablest  of  all  literary  men 
is  Fichte's  countryman,  Goethe.  To  that  man  too,  in  a 
strange  way,  there  was  given  what  we  may  call  a  life 
in  the  divine  idea  of  the  world ;  vision  of  the  inward 
divine  mystery :  and  strangely,  out  of  his  books,  the 
world  rises  imaged  once  more  as  godlike,  the  workman- 
ship and  temple  of  a  God.  Illuminated  all,  not  in  fierce 
impure  fire-splendor  as  of  Mahomet,  but  in  mild  celes- 
tial radiance ;  really  a  prophesy  in  these  most  un- 
prophetic  times ;  to  my  mind,  far  the  greatest  though 
one  of  the  quietest,  among  all  the  great  things  that 
have  come  to  pass  in  them.  Our  chosen  specimen  of 
the  hero  as  literary  man  would  be  this  Goethe. 
And  it  were  a  very  pleasant  plan  for  me  here  to  dis- 
course of  his  heroism  :  for  I  consider  him  to  be  a  true 
hero  ;  heroic  in  what  he  said  and  did,  and  perhaps  still 
more  in  what  he  did  not  say  and  did  not  do ;  to  me  a  noble 
spectacle :  a  great  heroic  ancient  man,  speaking  and 
keeping  silence  as  an  ancient  hero,  in  the  guise  of  a 
most  modern,  high-bred,  high-cultivated  man  of  letters! 
We  have  had  no  such  spectacle ;  no  man  capable  of 
affording  such,  for  the  last  hundred  and  fifty  years. 

But  at  present,  such  is  the  general  state  of  knowl- 
edge about  Goethe,  it  were  worse  than  useless  to  attempt 
speaking  of  him  in  this  case.  Speak  as  I  might, 
Goethe,  to  the  great  majority  of  you,  would  remain 
problematic,  vague ;  no  impression  but  a  false  one  could 
be  realized.  Him  we  must  leave  to  future  times, 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.       1 8? 

Johnson,  Burns,  Rousseau,  three  great  figures  from  a 
prior  time,  from  a  far  inferior  state  of  circumstances, 
will  suit  us  better  here.  Three  men  of  the  eighteenth 
century ;  the  conditions  of  their  life  far  more  resemble 
what  those  of  ours  still  are  in  England,  than  what 
Goethe's  in  Germany  were.  Alas,  these  men  did  not 
conquer  like  him ;  they  fought  bravely,  and  fell. 
They  were  not  heroic  bringers  of  the  light,  but  heroic 
seekers  of  it.  They  lived  under  galling  conditions; 
smuggling  as  under  mountains  of  impediment,  and 
could  not  unfold  themselves  into  clearness,  or  victori- 
ous interpretation  on  that  "  divine  idea.  "  It  is  rather 
the  tombs  of  three  literary  heroes  that  I  have  to  show 
you.  There  are  the  monumental  heaps,  under  which 
three  spiritual  giants  lie  buried.  Yery  mournful,  but 
also  great  and  full  of  interest  for  us.  We  will  linger 
by  them  for  a  while. 

Complaint  is  often  made,  in  these  times,  of  what  we  call 
the  disorganized  condition  of  society :  how  ill  many  ar- 
ranged forces  of  society  fulfill  their  work ;  how  many 
powerful  forces  are  seen  working  in  a  wasteful,  chaotic, 
altogether  unarranged  manner.  It  is  too  just  a  com- 
plaint, as  we  all  know.  But  perhaps  if  we  look  at  this 
of  books  and  the  writers  of  books,  we  shall  find  here, 
as  it  were,  the  summary  of  all  other  disorganization  ;  a 
sort  of  heart,  from  which,  and  to  which,  all  other  con- 
fusion circulates  in  the  world  !  Considering  what  book- 
writers  do  in  the  world,  and  what  the  world  does  with 
book-writers,  I  should  say,  It  is  the  most  anomalous 
thing  the  world  at  present  has  to  show.  We  should  get 
into  a  sea  far  beyond  sounding,  did  we  attempt  to  give 
account  of  this:  but  we  must  glance  at  it  for  the 
sake  of  our  subject.  The  worst  element  in  the  life 


1S8  LECTURES  ON  HKROK8. 

of  these  three  literary  heroes  was,  that  they  found 
their  business  and  position  such  a  chaos.  On  the 
beaten  road  there  is  tolerable  traveling ;  but  it  is  sore 
work,  and  many  have  to  perish,  fashioning  a  path 
though  the  impassable ! 

Our  pious  fathers,  feeling  well  what  importance 
lay  in  the  speaking  of  man  to  men,  founded  churches 
made  endowments,  regulations  ;  everywhere  in  the  civ- 
ilized world  there  is  a  pulpit,  environed  with  all  man- 
ner of  complex  dignified  appurtenances  and  further- 
ances, that  therefrom  a  man  with  the  tongue  may,  to 
best  advantage,  address  his  fellow-men.  They  felt 
that  this  was  the  most  important  thing ;  that  without 
this  there  was  no  good  thing.  It  is  a  right  pious 
work,  that  of  theirs  ;  beautiful  to  behold  !  But  now 
with  the  art  of  writing,  with  the  art  of  printing,  a  to- 
tal change  has  come  over  that  business.  The  writer 
of  a  book,  is  not  he  a  preacher  preaching  not  to  this 
parish  or  that,  on  this  day  or  that,  but  to  all  men  in  all 
times  and  places?  Surely  it  is  of  the- last  importance 
that  he  do  his  work  right,  whoever  do  it  wrong ;  that 
the  eye  report  not  falsely,  for  then  all  the  other  mem- 
bers are  astray !  Well ;  how  he  may  do  his  work, 
whether  he  do  it  right  or  wrong,  or  do  it  at  all,  is  a 
point  which  no  man  in  the  world  has  taken  the  pains 
to  think  of.  To  a  certain  shopkeeper,  trying  to  get 
some  money  for  his  books,  if  lucky,  he  is  of  some  im- 
portance ;  to  no  other  man  of  any.  Whence  he  came, 
whither  he  is  bound,  by  what  ways  he  arrived,  by 
what  he  might  be  furthered  on  his  course,  no  one  asks. 
He  is  an  accident  in  society.  He  wanders  like  a  wild 
Ishmaelite,  in  a  world  of  which  he  is  as  the  spiritual 
light  either  the  guidance  or  the  misguidance  ! 

Certainly  the  art  of  writing  is  the  most  miraculous 


THK  1LKRO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  189 

of  all  things  man  has  devised.  Odin's  runes  were  the 
first  form  of  the  work  of  a  hero ;  books,  written  words, 
are  still  miraculous  runes,  the  latest  form  !  In  books  lies 
the  soul  of  the  whole  past  time  ;  the  articulate  audible 
voice  of  the  past,  when  the  body  and  material  substance 
of  it  has  altogether  vanished  like  a  dream.  Mighty 
fleets  and  armies,  harbors  and  arsenals,  vast  cities, 
high-domed,  many-engined — they  are  precious,  great : 
but  what  do  they  become?  Agamemnon,  the  many 
Agamemnons,  Pericleses,  and  their  Greece ;  all  is  gone 
now  to  some  ruined  fragments,  dumb  mournful  wrecks 
and  blocks  :  but  the  books  of  Greece  ?  There  Greece, 
to  every  thinker,  still  very  literally  lives ;  can  be  called 
up  again  into  life.  No  magic  rune  is  stranger  than  a 
book.  All  that  mankind  has  done,  thought,  gained  or 
been  :  it  is  lying  as  in  magic  preservation  in  the  pages 
of  books.  They  are  the  chosen  possession  of  men. 

Do  not  books  still  accomplish  miracles  as  runes  were 
fabled  to  do?  They  persuade  men.  Not  the  wretch- 
edest  circulating-library  novel,  which  foolish  girls 
thumb  and  con  in  remote  villages,  but  will  help  to 
regulate  the  actual  practical  weddings  and  households 
of  those  foolish  girls.  So  "  Celia"  felt,  so  "  Clifford  " 
acted  :  the  foolisn  theorem  of  life,  stamped  into  those 
young  brains,  comes  out  as  a  solid  practice  one  day. 
Consider  whether  any  rune  in  the  wildest  imagination 
of  mythologist  ever  did  such  wonders  as,  on  the  actual 
firm  earth,  some  books  have  done!  What  built  St. 
Paul's  cathedral  ?  Look  at  the  heart  of  the  matter,  it 
was  that  divine  Hebrew  book — the  word  partly  of  the 
man  Moses,  an  outlaw  tending  his  Midianitish  herds, 
four  thousand  years  ago,  in  the  wildernesses  of  Sinai ! 
It  is  the  strangest  of  things,  yet  nothing  is  truer. 
With  the  art  of  writing,  of  which  printing  is  a  simple, 


loo  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

an  inevitable  and  comparatively  insignificant  corollary, 
the  true  reign  of  miracles  for  mankind  commenced. 
It  related,  with  a  wondrous  new  contiguity  and  perpetual 
closeness,  the  past  and  distant  with  the  present  in  time 
and  place ;  all  times  and  all  places  with  this  our  actual 
here  and  now.  All  things  were  altered  for  men;  all 
modes  of  important  work  of  men :  teaching,  preaching 
governing  and  all  else. 

To  look  at  teaching,  for  instance.  Universities  are 
a  notable,  respectable  product  of  the  modern  ages. 
Their  existence  too  is  modified,  to  the  very  basis  of  it, 
by  the  existence  of  books.  Universities  arose  while 
there  were  yet  no  books  procurable ;  while  a  man,  for 
a  single  book,  had  to  give  an  estate  of  land.  That,  in 
those  circumstances,  when  a  man  had  some  knowledge 
to  communicate,  he  should  do  it  by  gathering  the 
learners  round  him,  face  to  face,  was  a  necessity  for 
him.  If  you  wanted  to  know  what  Abelard  knew, 
you  must  go  and  listen  to  Abelard.  Thousands,  as 
many  as  thirty  thousand,  went  to  hear  Abelard  and 
that  metaphysical  theology  of  his.  And  now  for  any 
other  teacher  who  had  also  something  of  his  own  to 
teach,  there  was  a  great  convenience  opened  :  so  many 
thousands  eager  to  learn  were  already  assembled  yon- 
der; of  all  places  the  best  place  for  him  was  that. 
For  any  third  teacher  it  was  better  still ;  and  grew 
ever  the  better,  the  more  teachers  there  came.  It 
only  needed  now  that  the  king  took  notice  of  this 
new  phenomenon ;  combined  or  agglomerated  the 
various  schools  into  one  school ;  gave  it  edifices,  priv- 
ileges, encouragements  and  named  it  universitas,  or 
school  of  all  sciences :  the  university  of  Paris,  in  its 
essential  characters,  was  there.  The  model  of  all  sub- 
sequent universities ;  which  down  even  to  these  days, 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  191 

for  six  centuries  now,  have  gone  on  to  found  them- 
selves. Such,  I  conceive,  was  the  origin  of  univers- 
ities. 

It  is  clear,  however,  that  with  this  simple  circum- 
stance, facility  of  getting  books,  the  whole  conditions 
of  the  business  from  top  to  bottom  were  changed. 
Once  invent  printing,  you  metamorphosed  all  univers- 
ities, or  superseded  them !  The  teacher  needed  not 
now  to  gather  men  personally  round  him,  that  he 
might  speak  to  them  what  he  knew :  print  it  in  a  book, 
and  all  learners  far  and  wide,  for  a  trifle,  had  it  each 
at  his  own  fireside,  much  more  effectually  to  learn  it ! 
Doubtless  there  is  still  peculiar  virtue  in  speech  ;  even 
writers  of  books  may  still,  in  some  circumstances,  find 
it  convenient  to  speak  also — witness  our  present  meet- 
ing here  !  There  is,  one  would  say,  and  must  ever  re- 
main while  man  has  a  tongue,  a  distinct  province  for 
speech  as  well  as  for  writing  and  printing.  In  regard 
to  all  things  this  must  remain  ;  to  universities  among 
others.  But  the  limits  of  the  two  have  nowhere  yet 
been  pointed  out,  ascertained  ;  much  less  put  in  prac- 
tice :  the  university  which  would  completely  take  in 
that  great  new  fact,  of  the  existence  of  printed  books 
and  stand  on  a  clear  footing  for  the  nineteenth  century 
as  the  Paris  one  did  for  the  thirteenth,  has  not  yet 
come  into  existence.  If  we  think  of  it,  all  that  a  uni- 
versity, or  final  highest  school  can  do  for  us,  is  still  but 
what  the  first  school  began  doing — teach  us  to  read. 
"We  learn  to  ready  in  various  languages,  in  various 
sciences  ;  we  learn  the  alphabet  and  letters  of  all  man- 
ner of  books.  But  the  place  where  we  are  to  get 
knowledge,  even  theoretic  knowledge,  is  the  books 
themselves!  It  depends  on  what  we  read,  after  all 
manner  of  professors  have  done  their  best  for  us, 


192  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

i  The   true  university  of  these  days  is  a  collection  of 
(books. 

But  to  the  church  itself,  as  I  hinted  already,  all  is 
changed,  in  its  preaching,  in  its  working,  by  the  intro- 
duction of  books.  The  church  is  the  working  recog- 
nized union  of  our  priests  or  prophets,  of  those  who  by 
wise  teaching  guide  the  souls  of  men.  While  there 
was  no  writing,  even  while  there  was  no  easy-writing 
o?  printing,  the  preaching  of  the  voice  was  the  natural 
sole  method  of  performing  this.  But  now  with  books  ! 
He  that  can  write  a  true  book,  to  persuade  England, 
is  not  he  the  bishop  and  archbishop,  the  primate  of 
England  and  of  all  England?  1  many  a  time  say,  the 
writers  of  newspapers,  pamphlets,  poems,  books,  these 
are  the  real  working  effective  church  of  a  modern 
country.  JSTay  not  only  our  preaching,  but  even  our 
worship,  is  not  it  too  accomplished  by  means  of  printed 
books  ?  The  noble  sentiment  which  a  gifted  soul  has 
clothed  for  us  in  melodious  words,  which  brings  melody 
into  our  hearts — is  not  this  essentially,  -if  we  will 
understand  it,  of  the  nature  of  worship  ?  There  are 
many,  in  all  countries,  who,  in  this  confused  time,  have 
no  other  method  of  worship.  He  who,  in  any  way, 
shows  us  better  than  we  knew  before  that  a  lily  of  the 
fields  is  beautiful,  does  he  not  show  it  us  as  an  effluence 
of  the  fountain  of  all  beaut\r ;  as  the  handwriting,  made 
visible  there  of  the  great  Maker  of  the  universe  ?  He 
has  sung  for  us,  made  us  sing  with  him,  a  little  verse 
of  a  sacred  psalm.  Essentially  so.  How  much  more 
he  who  sings,  who  says,  or  in  any  way  brings  home  to 
our  heart  the  noble  doings,  feelings  darings  and  en- 
durances of  a  brother  man  !  He  has  verily  touched 
our  hearts  as  with  u  live  co&lfrom  the  altar.  Perhaps 
there  is  no  worship  more  authentic. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.       193 

Literature,  so  far  as  it  is  literature,  is  an  "  apocalypse 
of  nature,"  a  revealing  of  the  "  open  secret."  It  may 
well  enough  be  named,  in  Fichte's style, a  "continuous 
revelation  "  of  the  godlike  in  the  terrestrial  and  com- 
mon. The  godlike  does  ever,  in  very  truth,  endure 
there  ;  is  brought  out,  now  in  this  dialect,  now  in  that, 
with  various  degrees  of  clearness :  all  true  gifted 
singers  and  speakers  are,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
doing  so.  The  dark  stormful  indignation  of  a  Byron, 
so  wayward  and  perverse,  may  have  touches  of  it ;  nay 
the  withered  mockery  of  a  French  skeptic — his  mock- 
ery of  the  false,  a  love  and  worship  of  the  true.  How 
much  more  the  sphere-harmony  of  a  Shakespeare,  of  a 
Goethe ;  the  cathedral-music  of  a  Milton  !  They  are 
something  too,  those  humble  genuine  lark-notes  of  a 
Burns — skylark,  starting  from  the  humble  furrow,  far 
overhead  into  the  blue  depths  and  singing  to  us  so 
genuinely  there !  For  all  true  singing  is  of  the  nature' 
of  worship  ;  as  indeed  all  true  working  may  be  said  to 
be — whereof  such  singing  is  but  the  record,  and  fit 
melodious  representation,  to  us.  Fragments  of  a  real 
"  church  liturgy  "  and  "  body  of  homilies,"  strangely 
disguised  from  the  common  eye,  are  to  be  found 
weltering  in  that  huge  froth-ocean  of  printed  speech 
we  loosely  call  literature!  Books  are  our  church 
too. 

Or  turning  now  to  the  government  of  men.  Witen- 
agemote,  old  parliament  was  a  great  thing.  The  affairs 
of  the  nation  were  there  deliberated  and  decided  ; 
what  we  were  to  do  as  a  nation.  But  does  not,  though 
the  name  parliament  subsists,  the  parliamentary  debate 
go  on  now,  everywhere  and  at  all  times,  in  a  far  more 
comprehensive  way,  out  of  parliament  altogether  ? 
Burke  said  there  were  three  estates  in  parliament ;  but, 


194  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

in  the  reporters'  gallery  yonder,  there  sat  &  fourth 
estate  more  important  far  than  they  all.  It  is  not  a 
figure  of  speech,  or  a  witty  saying  ;  it  is  a  literal  fact 
— very  momentous  to  us  in  these  times.  Literature  is 
our  parliament  too.  Printing,  which  comes  necessarily 
out  of  writing,  I  say  often,  is  equivalent  to  democracy  : 
invent  writing,  democracy  is  inevitable.  Writing 
brings  printing  ;  brings  universal  every-day  extempore 
printing,  as  we  see  at  present.  Whoever  can  speak, 
speaking  now  to  the  whole  nation,  becomes  a  power, 
a  branch  of  government,  with  inalienable  weight  in 
law-making,  in  all  acts  of  authority.  It  matters  not 
what  rank  he  has,  what  revenues  or  garnitures :  the 
requisite  thing  is,  that  he  have  a  tongue  which  others 
will  listen  to ;  this  and  nothing  more  is  requisite.  The 
nation  is  governed  by  all  that  has  tongue  in  the  nation  : 
democracy  is  virtually  there.  Add  only,  that  whatso- 
ever power  exists  will  have  itself,  by  and  by,  organized ; 
working  secretly  under  bandages,  obscurations,  ob- 
structions, it  will  never  rest  till  it  get  to  work  free, 
unencumbered,  visible  to  all.  Democracy  virtually  ex- 
tant will  insist  on  becoming  palpably  extant. 

On  all  sides,  are  we  not  driven  to  the  conclusion 
that,  of  the  things  which  man  can  do  or  make  here 
below,  by  far  the  most  momentous,  wonderful  and 
worthy  are  the  things  we  call  books  !  Those  poor  bits 
of  rag-paper  with  black  ink  on  them — from  the  daily 
newspaper  to  the  sacred  Hebrew  book,  what  have  they 
not  done,  what  are  they  not  doing !  For  indeed, 
whatever  be  the  outward  form  of  the  thing  (bits  of 
paper,  as  we  say  and  black  ink),  is  it  not  verily,  at 
bottom,  the  highest  act  of  man's  faculty  that  produces 
a  book  ?  It  is  the  thought  of  man  ;  the  true  thaumat- 
"urgic  virtue ;  by  which  man  works  all  things  whatso- 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.       195 

ever.  All  that  he  does  and  brings  to  pass,  is  the  vest- 
ure  of  a  thought.  This  London  city,  with  all  its 
houses,  palaces,  steam-engines,  cathedrals  and  huge 
immeasurable  traffic  and  tumult,  what  is  it  but  a 
thought,  but  millions  of  thoughts  made  into  one — a 
huge  immeasurable  spirit  of  a  thought,  embodied  in 
brick,  in  iron,  smoke,  dust,  palaces,  parliaments,  hack- 
ney coaches,  Katherine  docks  and  the  rest  of  it !  Not 
a  brick  was  made  but  some  man  had  to  think  of  the 
making  of  that  brick.  The  thing  we  called  "  bits  of 
paper  with  traces  of  black  ink,"  is  the  purest  embodi- 
ment a  thought  of  man  can  have.  No  wonder  it  is,  in 
all  ways,  the  activest  and  noblest. 

All  this,  of  the  importance  and  supreme  importance 
of  the  man  of  letters  in  modern  society  and  how  the 
press  is  to  such  a  degree  superseding  the  pulpit,  the 
senate,  the  senatus  academicus  and  much  else,  has  been 
admitted  for  a  good  while ;  and  recognized  often 
enough,  in  late  times,  with  a  sort  of  sentimental  tri- 
umph and  wonderment.  It  seems  to  me,  the  senti- 
mental by  and  by  will  have  to  give  place  to  the  prac- 
tical. If  men  of  letters  are  so  incalculably  influential, 
actually  performing  such  work  for  us  from  age  to  age 
and  even  from  day  to  day,  then  I  think  we  may  con- 
clude that  men  of  letters  will  not  always  wander  like 
unrecognized  unregulated  Ishmaelites  among  us! 
Whatsoever  thing,  as  I  said  above,  has  virtual  un- 
noticed power  will  cast  off  its  wrappages,  bandages 
and  step  forth  one  day  with  palpably  articulated,  uni- 
versally visible  power.  That  one  man  wear  the  clothes 
and  take  the  wages,  of  a  function  which  is  done  by 
quite  another:  there  can  be  no  profit  in  this;  this  is 
not  right,  it  is  wrong.  And  yet,  alas,  the  making  of 
it  right— what  a  business,  for  long  times  to  come  ! 


196  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

Sure  enough,  this  what  we  call  organization  of  the 
literary  guild  is  still  a  great  way  off,  encumbered  with 
all  manner  of  complexities.  If  you  asked  me  what 
were  the  best  possible  organization  for  the  men  of 
letters  in  modern  society  ;  the  arrangement  of  further- 
ance and  regulation,  grounded  the  most  accurately  on 
the  actual  facts  of  their  position  and  of  the  world's 
position — I  should  beg  to  say  that  the  problem  far  ex- 
ceeded my  faculty  !  It  is  not  one  man's  faculty  ;  it  is 
that  of  many  successive  men  turned  earnestly  upon  it, 
that  will  bring  out  even  an  approximate  solution. 
What  the  best  arrangement  were,  none  of  us  could 
say.  But  if  you  ask :  "  Which  is  the  worst  ?  "  I  answer : 
"  This  which  we  now  have,  that  chaos  should  sit  um- 
pire in  it ;  this  is  the  worst."  To  the  best,  or  any 
good  one,  there  is  yet  a  long  way. 

One  remark  I  must  not  omit,  That  royal  or  parlia- 
mentary grants  of  money  are  by  no  means  the  chief 
thing  wanted !  To  give  our  men  of  letters  stipends, 
endowments  and  all  furtherance  of  cash,  will  do  little 
toward  the  business.  On  the  whole,  one  is  weary  of 
hearing  about  the  omnipotence  of  money.  I  will  say 
rather  that,  for  a  genuine  man,  it  is  no  evil  to  be  poor ; 
that  there  ought  to  be  literary  men  poor — to  show 
whether  they  are  genuine  or  not !  Mendicant  orders, 
bodies  of  good  men  doomed  to  beg,  were  instituted  in 
the  Christian  church  ;  a  most  natural  and  even  neces- 
sary developement  of  the  spirit  of  Christianity.  It 
was  itself  founded  on  poverty,  on  sorrow,  contradic- 
tion, crucifixion,  every  species  of  worldly  distress  and 
degradation.  We  may  say,  that  he  who  has  not 
known  those  things,  and  learned  from  them  the 
priceless  lessons  they  have  to  teach,  has  missed  a 
good  opportunity  of  schooling.  To  beg  and  go  bare- 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.       197 

foot,  in  coarse  woollen  cloak  with  a  rope  round  your 
loins  and  be  despised  of  all  the  world,  was  no  beauti- 
ful business — nor  an  honorable  one  in  any  eye,  till 
the  nobleness  of  those  who  did  so  had  made  it  honored 
of  some ! 

Begging  is  not  in  our  course  at  the  present  time : 
but  for  the  rest  of  it,  who  will  say  that  a  Johnson  is 
not  perhaps  the  better  for  being  poor  3  It-  is  needful 
for  him,  at  all  rates,  to  know  that  outward  profit, 
that  success  of  any  kind  is  not  the  goal  he  has  to  aim 
at.  Pride,  vanity,  ill-conditioned  egoism  of  all  sorts, 
are  bred  in  his  heart,  as  in  every  heart ;  need,  above 
all,  to  be  cast  out  of  his  heart— to  be,  with  whatever 
pangs,  torn  out  of  it,  cast  forth  from  it,  as  a  thing 
worthless.  Byron,  born  rich  and  noble,  made  out 
even  less  than  Burns,  poor  and  plebeian.  Who  knows 
but,  in  that  same  "  best  possible  organization "  as  yet 
far  off,  poverty  may  still  enter  as  an  important  ele- 
ment ?  What  if  our  men  of  letters,  men  setting  up  to 
be  spiritual  heroes,  were  still  then,  as  they  now  are,  a 
kind  of  "  involuntary  monastic  order  ;  "  bound  still  to 
this  same  ugly  poverty — till  they  had  tried  what  was 
in  it  too,  till  they  had  learned  to  make  it  to  do  for 
them  !  Money,  in  truth,  can  do  much,  but  it  cannot 
do  all.  We  must  know  the  province  of  it  and  confine 
it  there ;  and  even  spurn  it  back,  when  it  wishes  to 
get  farther. 

Besides,  were  the  money-furtherances,  the  proper 
season  for  them,  the  fit  assignor  of  them,  all  settled — 
how  is  the  Burns  to  be  recognized  that  merits  these  ? 
He  must  pass  through  the  ordeal  and  prove  himself. 
This  ordeal ;  this  wild  welter  of  a  chaos  which  is 
called  literary  life :  this  too  is  a  kind  of  ordeal !  There 
is  clear  truth  in  the  idea  that  a  struggle  from  the 


198  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

lower  classes  of  society,  toward  the  upper  regions  and 
rewards  of  society,  must  ever  continue.  Strong  men 
are  born  there,  who  ought  to  stand  elsewhere  than 
there.  The  manifold,  inextricably  complex,  universal 
struggle  of  these  constitutes  and  must  constitute,  what 
is  called  the  progress  of  society.  For  men  of  letters, 
as  for  all  other  sorts  of  men.  How  to  regulate  that 
struggle  ?  There  is  the  whole  question.  To  leave  it 
as  it  is,  at  the  mercy  of  blind  chance ;  a  whirl  of  dis- 
tracted atoms,  one  cancelling  the  other ;  one  of  the 
thousand  arriving  saved,  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
lost  by  the  way  ;  your  royal  Johnson  languishing  in- 
active in  garrets,  or  harnessed  to  the  yoke  of  printer 
cave ;  your  Burns  dying  broken-hearted  as  a  gauger  ; 
your  Rousseau  driven  into  mad  exasperation,  kindling 
French  revolutions  by  his  paradoxes :  this,  as  we  said, 
is  clearly  enough  the  worst  regulation.  The  best,  alas, 
is  far  from  us ! 

And  yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  it  is  coming ;  ad- 
vancing on  us,  as  yet  hidden  in  the  bosom  of  centuries : 
this  is  a  prophesy  one  can  risk.  For  so  soon  as  men 
get  to  discern  the  importance  of  a  thing,  they  do  in- 
fallibly set  about  arranging  it,  facilitating,  forwarding 
it ;  and  rest  not  till,  in  some  approximate  degree,  they 
have  accomplished  that.  I  say,  of  all  priesthoods, 
aristocracies,  governing  classes  at  present  extant  in  the 
world,  there  is  no  class  comparable  for  importance  to 
that  priesthood  of  the  writers  of  books.  This  is  a  fact 
which  he  who  runs  may  read — and  draw  inferences 
from.  "  Literature  will  take  care  of  itself,"  answered 
Mr.  Pitt,  when  applied  to  for  some  help  for  Burns. 
"  Yes,"  adds  Mr.  Southey,  "  it  will  take  care  of  itself  ; 
and  of  you  too,  ,  if  you  do  not  look  to  it !  " 

The  result  to  individual  men  of  letters  is  not  the  mo- 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  199 

mentous  one  ;  they  are  but  individuals, an  infinitesimal 
fraction  of  the  great  body ;  they  can  struggle  on  and 
live  or  else  die,  as  they  have  been  wont.  But  it  deeply 
concerns  the  whole  society,  \\hether  it  will  set  its  light 
on  high  places,  to  walk  thereby ;  or  trample  it  under 
foot  and  scatter  it  in  all  ways  of  wild  waste  (not  with- 
out conflagration),  as  heretofore !  Light  is  the  one 
thing  wanted  for  the  world.  Put  wisdom  in  the  head 
of  the  world,  the  world  will  fight  its  battle  victoriously 
and  be  the  best  world  man  can  make  it.  I  call  this 
anomaly  of  a  disorganic  literary  class  the  heart  of  all 
other  anomalies,  at  once  product  and  parent ;  some 
good  arrangement  for  that  would  be  as  the  punctum 
saliens  of  a  new  vitality  and  just  arrangement  for  all. 
Already,  in  some  European  countries,  in  France,  in 
Prussia,  one  traces  some  beginnings  of  an  arrangement 
for  the  literary  class ;  indicating  the  gradual  possibility 
of  such.  I  believe  that  it  is  possible  ;  that  it  will  have 
to  be  possible. 

By  far  the  most  interesting  fact  I  hear  about  the 
Chinese  is  one  on  which  we  cannot  arrive  at  clearness, 
but  which  excites  endless  curiosity  even  in  the  dim 
state :  this  namely,  that  they  do  attempt  to  make 
their  men  of  letters  their  governors !  It  would  be 
rash  to  say,  one  understood  how  this  was  done,  or 
with  what  degree  of  success  it  was  done.  All  such 
things  must  be  very  unsuccessful ;  yet  a  small  degree 
of  success  is  precious ;  the  very  attempt  how  precious ! 
There  does  seem  to  be,  all  over  China,  a  more  or  less 
active  search  everywhere  to  discover  the  men  of  talent 
that  grow  up  in  the  young  generation.  Schools  there 
are  for  every  one  :  a  foolish  sort  of  training,  yet  still  a 
sort.  The  youths  who  distinguish  themselves  in  the 
lower  school  are  promoted  into  favorable  stations  in 


200  LECTURES  ON  HEROE& 

the  higher,  that  they  may  still  more  distinguish  them- 
selves— forward  and  forward :  it  appears  to  be  out  of 
these  that  the  official  persons  and  incipient  governors, 
are  taken.  These  are  they  whom  they  try  first, 
whether  they  can  govern  or  not.  And  surely  with 
the  best  hope  :  for  they  are  the  men  that  have  already 
shown  intellect.  Try  them :  they  have  not  governed 
or  administered  as  yet ;  perhaps  they  cannot ;  but 
there  is  no  doubt  they  have  some  understanding — 
without  which  no  man  can  !  Neither  is  understanding 
a  tool,  as  we  are  too  apt  to  figure  ;  "it  is  &  hand  which 
can  handle  any  tool."  Try  these  men  :  they  are  of  all 
others  the  best  worth  trying.  Surely  there  is  no  kind 
of  government,  constitution,  revolution,  social  apparatus 
or  arrangement,  that  I  know  of  in  this  world,  so  prom- 
ising to  one's  scientific  curiosity  as  this.  The  man  of 
intellect  at  the  top  of  affairs :  this  is  the  aim  of  all 
constitutions  and  revolutions,  if  they  have  any  aim. 
For  the  man  of  true  intellect,  as  I  assert  and  believe 
always,  is  the  noble-hearted  man  withal,  the  true,  just, 
humane  and  valiant  man.  Get  him  for  governor,  all  is 
got ;  fail  to  get  him,  though  you  had  constitutions 
plentiful  as  blackberries  and  a  parliament  in  every 
village,  there  is  nothing  yet  got ! 

These  things  look  strange,  truly  ;  and  are  not  such 
as  we  commonly  speculate  upon.  But  we  are  fallen 
into  strange  times ;  these  things  will  require  to  be 
speculated  upon ;  to  be  rendered  practicable,  to  be  in 
some  way  put  in  practice.  These  and  many  others. 
On  all  hands  of  us,  there  is  the  announcement,  audible 
enough,  that  the  old  empire  of  routine  has.  ended ; 
that  to  say  a  thing  has  long  been,  is  no  reason  for  its 
continuing  to  be.  The  things  which  have  been  are 
fallen  into  decay,  are  fallen  into  incompetence  ;  large 


THE  tttsno  AS  MAN  of1  LETTEUS.  201 

s  of  mankind,  in  every  society  of  our  Europe,  are 
no  longer  capable  of  living  at  all  by  the  things  which 
have  been.  When  millions  of  men  can  no  longer  by 
their  utmost  exertion  gain  food  for  themselves,  and 
"the  third  man  for  thirty-six  weeks  each  year  is 
short  of  third  rate  potatoes,"  the  things  which  have 
been  must  decidedly  prepare  to  alter  themselves! 
I  will  now  quit  this  of  the  organization  of  men  of 
letters. 

Alas,  the  evil  that  pressed  heaviest  on  those  literary 
heroes  of  ours  was  not  the  want  of  organization  for 
men  of  letters,  but  a  far  deeper  one ;  out  of  which, 
indeed,  this  and  so  many  other ' evils  for  the  literary 
man  and  for  all  men,  had,  as  from  their  fountain, 
taken  rise.  That  our  hero,  as  man  of  letters  had  to 
travel  without  highway,  companionless,  through  an  in- 
organic chaos — and  leave  his  own  life  and  faculty 
lying  there,  as  a  partial  contribution  toward  pushing 
some  highway  through  it :  this,  had  not  his  faculty 
itself  been  so  perverted  and  paralyzed,  he  might  have 
put  up  with,  might  have  considered  to  be  but  the 
common  lot  of  heroes.  His  fatal  misery  was  the 
spiritual  paralysis,  so  we  may  name  it,  of  the  age  in 
w-hich  his  life  lay;  whereby  his  life  too,  do  what  he 
might,  was  half -paralyzed !  The  eighteenth  was  a 
*!,•••  jttical  century  ;  in  which  little  word  there  is  a 
whole  Pandora's  box  of  miseries.  Skepticism  means 
not  intellectual  doubt  alone,  but  moral  doubt ;  all 
sorts  of  mfidelity,  insincerity,  spiritual  paralysis. 
Perhaps,  in  few  centuries  that  one  could  specify  since 
the  world  began,  was  a  life  of  heroism  more  difficult 
for  a  man.  That  was  not  an  age  of  faith — an  age  of 
heroes  !  The  very  possibility  of  heroism  had  been,  as 


202  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

it  were,  formerly  abnegated  in  the  minds  of  all. 
Heroism  was  gone  forever ;  triviality,  formulism  and 
commonplace  were  come  forever.  The  "  age  of  mira- 
cles "  had  been,  or  perhaps-  had  not  been ;  but  it  was 
lot  any  longer.  An  effete  world ;  wherein  wonder, 
greatness,  godhood  could  not  now  dwell — in  one  word, 
a  godless  wrorld ! 

How  mean,  dwarfish  are  their  ways  of  thinking,  in 
this  time — compared  not  with  the  Christian  Shakes- 
peares  and  Miltons,  but  with  the  old  pagan  Skalds, 
with  any  species  of  believing  men !  The  living  tree 
igdrasil,  with  the  melodious  prophetic  waving  of  its 
world  wide  boughs,  deep-rooted  as  Hela,  has  died  out 
into  the  clanking  of  a  world-machine.  "  Tree  "  and 
"  machine :  "  contrast  these  two  things.  I,  for  my 
share,  declare  the  world  to  be  no  machine  !  I  say  that 
it  does  not  go  by  wheel-and-pinion  "motives,"  self- 
interests,  checks,  balances ;  that  there  is  something  far 
other  in  it  than  the  clank  of  spinning-jennies  and  par- 
liamentary majorities ;  and,  on  the  whole,  that  it  is 
not  a  machine  at  all !  The  old  Norse  heathen  had  a 
truer  notion  of  God's-world  than  these  poor  machine- 
skeptics  :  the  old  heathen  Norse  were  sincere  men. 
But  for  these  poor  skeptics  there  was  no  sincerity,  no 
truth.  Half-truth  and  hearsay  was  called  truth. 
Truth,  for  most  men,  meant  plausibility ;  to  be  meas- 
ured by  the  number  of  votes  you  could  get.  They  had 
lost  any  notion  that  sincerity  was  possible,  or  of  what 
sincerity  was.  How  many  plausibilities  asking,  with 
unaffected  surprise  and  the  air  of  offended  virtue, 
What !  am  not  I  sincere  ?  Spiritual  paralysis,  I  say, 
nothing  left  but  a  mechanical  life,  was  the  character- 
istic of  that  century.  For  the  common  man,  unless 
happily  he  stood  below  his  century  and  belonged  to 


THE  HRRO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  203 

another  prior  one,  it  was  impossible  to  be  a  believer, 
a  hero ;  he  lay  buried,  unconscious,  under  these  bale- 
ful influences.  To  the  strongest  man,  on  I}7  with  in- 
finite struggle  and  confusion  was  it  possible  to  work 
himself  half-loose ;  and  lead  as  it  were,  in  an  enchanted, 
most  tragical  way,  a  spiritual  death-in-life  and  be  a 
half -hero ! 

Skepticism  is  the  name  we  give  to  all  this  ;  as  the 
chief  symptom,  as  the  chief  origin  of  all  this.  Con- 
cerning which  so  much  were  to  be  said  !  It  would 
take  many  discourses,  not  a  small  fraction  of  one  dis- 
course, to  state  what  one  feels  about  that  eighteenth 
century  and  its  ways.  As  indeed  this  and  the  like  of 
this,  which  we  now  call  skepticism,  is  precisely  the 
black  malady  and  like-foe,  against  which  all  teaching 
and  discoursing  since  man's  life  began  has  directed  it- 
self :  the  battle  of  belief  against  unbelief  is  the  never- 
ending  battle !  Neither  is  it  in  the  way  of  crimination 
that  one  would  wish  to  speak.  Skepticism,  for  that 
century,  we  must  consider  as  the  decay  of  old  ways  of 
believing,  the  preparation  afar  off  for  new  better  and 
wider  ways — an  inevitable  thing.  We  will  not  blame 
men  for  it ;  we  will  lament  their  hard  fate.  We  will 
understand  that  destruction  of  old  forms  is  not  de- 
struction of  everlasting  substances ;  that  skepticism, 
as  sorrowful  and  hateful  as  we  see  it,  is  not  an  end  but 
a  beginning. 

The  other  day  speaking,  without  prior  purpose  that 
way,  of  Bentham's  theory  of  man  and  man's  life,  I 
chanced  to  call  it  a  more  beggarly  one  than  Mahomet's. 
I  am  bound  to  say,  now  when  it  is  once  uttered,  that 
such  is  my  deliberate  opinion.  Not  that  one  would 
mean  offense  against  the  man  Jeremy  Bentham,  or 
those  who  respect  and  believe  him.  Bentharn  himself 


204  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

and  even  the  creed  of  Bentham,  seems  to  me  compar- 
atively worthy  of  praise.  It  is  a  determinate  being 
what  all  the  world,  in  a  cowardly  half-and-half  man- 
ner, was  tending  to  be.  Let  us  have  the  crisis ;  we 
shall  either  have  death  or  the  cure.  I  call  this  gross, 
steam-engine  utilitarianism  an  approach  toward  new 
faith.  It  was  a  laying-down  of  cant ;  a  saying  to  one- 
self: uWell  then,  this  world  is  a  dead  iron  machine, 
the  god  of  it  gravitation  and  selfish  hunger ;  let  us  see 
what,  by  checking  and  balancing  and  good  adjustment 
of  tooth  and  pinion,  can  be  made  of  it !  "  Benthanism 
has  something  complete,  manful,  in  such  fearless  com- 
mittal of  itself  to  what  it  finds  true ;  you  may  call  it 
heroic,  though  a  heroism  with  its  eyes  put  out !  It  is 
the  culminating  point  and  fearless  ultimatum,  of  what 
lay  in  the  half-and-half  state,  pervading  man's  whole 
existence  in  that  eighteenth  century.  It  seems  to  me, 
all  deniers  of  godhood  and  all  lip-believers  of  it,  are 
bound  to  be  Benthamites,  if  they  have  courage  and 
honesty.  Benthamism  is  an  eyeless  heroism  :  the 
human  species,  like  a  hapless  blinded  Samson  grinding 
in  the  Philistine  mill,  clasps  convulsively  the  pillars 
of  its  mill ;  brings  huge  ruin  down,  but  ultimately 
__  deliverance  withal.  Of  Bentham  I  meant  to  say  no 
harm. 

But  this  I  do  say  and  would  wish  all  men  to  know 
and  lay  to  heart,  that  he  who  discerns  nothing  but 
mechanism  in  the  universe  has  in  the  fatalest  way 
missed  the  secret  of  the  universe  altogether.  That  all 
godhood  should  vanish  out  of  men's  conception  of  this 
universe  seems  to  me  precisely  the  most  brutal  error — 
I  will  not  disparage  heathenism  by  calling  it  a 
heathen  error — that  men  could  fall  into.  It  is  not 
true ;  it  is  false  at  the  very  heart  of  it.  A  man  who 


THE  HERO  A8  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  205 

thinks  SO  will  think  wrong  about  all  things  in  the 
world  ;  this  original  sin  will  vitiate  all  other  conclusions 
he  can  form.  One  might  call  it  the  most  lamentable 
of  delusions — not  forgetting  witchcraft  itself !  Witch- 
craft worshiped  at  least  a  living  devil;  but  this  wor- 
ships a  dead  iron  devil;  no  God,  not  even  a  devil! 
Whatsoever  is  noble,  divine,  inspired,  drops  thereby 
out  of  life.  There  remains  everywhere  in  life  a  despic- 
able caputmortuum  •  the  mechanical  hull,  all  soul  fled 
out  of  it.  How  can  a  man  act  heroically  ?  The 
"doctine  of  motives"  will  teach  him  that  it  is,  under 
more  or  less  disguise,  nothing  but  a  wretched  love  of 
pleasure,  fear  of  pain  ;  that  hunger,  of  applause,  of 
cash,  of  whatsoever  victual  it  may  be,  is  the  ultimate 
fact  of  man's  life.  Atheism,  in  brief — which  does  in- 
deed frightfully  punish  itself.  The  man,  I  say,  is  be- 
come spiritually  a  paralytic  man  ;  this  godlike  universe 
a  dead  mechanical  steam-engine,  all  working  by  mo- 
tives, checks,  balances  and  I  know  not  what ;  wherein, 
as  in  the  detestable  belly  of  some  Phalaris'-bull  of 
his  own  contriving,  he  the  poor  Phalaris  sits  miserably 
dying! 

Belief  I  define  to  be  the  healthy  act  of  man's  mind. 
It  is  a  mysterious  indescribable  process,  that  of  getting 
to  believe — indescribable,  as  all  vital  acts  are.  We 
have  our  mind  given  us,  not  that  it  may  cavil  and 
argue,  but  that  it  may  see  into  something,  give  us 
clear  belief  and  understanding  about  something, 
whereon  we  are  then  to  proceed  to  act.  Doubt,  truly, 
is  not  itself  a  crime.  Certainly  we  do  not  rush  out, 
clutch  up  the  first  thing  we  find  and  straightway  be- 
lieve that!  All  manner  of  doubts,  inquiry,  (SKtyis  as 
it  is  named,  about  all  manner  of  objects,  dwells  in 
every  reasonable  mind.  It  is  the  mystic  working  of 


206  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

the  mind,  on  the  object  it  is  getting  to  know  and  be- 
lieve. Belief  comes  out  of  all  this,  above  ground,  like 
the  tree  from  its  hidden  roots.  But  now  if,  even  on 
common  things,  we  require  that  a  man  keep  his  doubts 
silent  and  not  babble  of  them  till  they  in  some  measure 
become  affirmations  or  denials ;  how  much  more  in 
regard  to  the  highest  things,  impossible  to  speak  of  in 
words  at  all !  That  a  man  parade  his  doubt  and  get- 
to  imagine  that  debating  and  logic  (which  means  at 
best  only  the  manner  of  telling  us  your  thought,  your 
belief  or  disbelief,  about  a  thing)  is  the  triumph  and 
true  work  of  what  intellect  he  has  :  alas,  this  is  as  if 
you  should  overturn  the  tree  and  instead  of  green 
boughs,  leaves  and  fruits,  show  us  ugly  taloned  roots 
turned  up  into  the  air — and  no  growth,  only  death  and 
misery  going  on ! 

For  the  skepticism,  as  I  said,  is  not  intellectual  only ; 
it  is  moral  also  ;  a  chronic  atrophy  and  disease  of  the 
whole  soul.  A  man  lives  by  believing  something ;  not 
by  debating  and  arguing  about  many  things.  A  sad 
case  for  him  when  all  that  he  can  manage  to  believe  is 
something  he  can  button  in  his  pocket  and  with  one 
or  the  other  organ  eat  and  digest !  Lower  than  that 
he  will  not  get.  We  call  those  ages  in  which  he  gets 
so  low  the  mournfulest,  sickest  and  meanest  of  all  ages. 
The  world's  heart  is  palsied,  sick :  how  can  any  limb  of 
it  be  whole  ?  Genuine  acting  ceases  in  all  departments 
of  the  world's  work;  dextrous  similitude  of  acting 
begins.  The  world's  wages  are  pocketed,  the  world's 
work  is  not  done.  Heroes  have  gone  out ;  quacks 
have  come  in.  Accordingly,  what  century,  since  the 
end  of  the  Roman  world,  which  also  was  a  time  of 
skepticism,  simulacra  and  universal  decadence,  so 
abounds  with  quacks  as  the  eighteenth?  Consider 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  207 

them,  with  their  tumid  sentimental  vaporing  about 
virtue,  benevolence — the  wretched  quack-squadron, 
Cagliostro  at  the  head  of  them  1  Few  men  were  with- 
out quackery  ;  they  had  got  to  consider  it  a  necessary 
ingredient  and  amalgam  for  truth.  Chatham,  our 
brave  Chatham  himself,  comes  down  to  the  house,  all 
wrapped  and  bandaged ;  he  "  has  crawled  out  in  great 
bodily  suffering,"  and  so  on— forgets,  says  Walpole, 
that  he  is  acting  the  sick  man  ;  in  the  fire  of  debate, 
snatches  his  arm  from  the  sling  and  oratorically  swings 
and  brandishes  it !  Chatham  himself  lives  the  strang- 
est mimetic  life,  half-hero,  half-quack,  all  along.  For 
indeed  the  world  is  full  of  dupes  ;  and  you  will  have  to 
gain  the  world's  suffrage!  How  the  duties  of  the 
world  will  be  done  in  that  case,  what  quantities  of 
error,  which  means  failure,  which  means  sorrow  and 
misery,  to  some  and  to  many,  will  gradually  accumu- 
late in  all  provinces  of  the  world's  business,  we  need 
not  compute. 

It  seems  to  me,  you  lay  your  finger  here  on  the 
heart  of  the  world's  maladies,  when  you  call  it  a 
skeptical  world.  An  insincere  world ;  a  godless  un- 
truth of  a  world !  It  is  out  of  this,  as  I  consider,  that 
the  whole  tribe  of  social  pestilences,  Frence  revolutions, 
chartisms  and  what  not,  have  derived  their  being — 
their  chief  necessity  to  be.  This  must  alter.  Till  this 
alter,  nothing  can  beneficially  alter.  My  one  hope  of 
the  world,  my  inexpugnable  consolation  in  looking  at 
the  miseries  of  the  world,  is  that  this  is  altering.  Here 
and  there  one  does  now  find  a  man  who  knows,  as  of 
old,  that  this  world  is  a  truth  and  no  plausibility  and 
falsity  ;  that  he  himself  is  alive,  not  dead  or  paralytic ; 
and  that  the  world  is  alive,  instinct  with  godhood, 
beautiful  and  awful,  even  as  in  the  beginning  of  days  1 


208  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

One  man  once  knowing  this,  many  men,  all  men,  must 
by  and  by  come  to  know  it.  It  lies  there  clear,  for 
whosoever  will  take  the  spectacles  off  his  eyes  and 
honestly  look,  to  know!  For  such  a  man  the  unbe- 
lieving century,  with  its  unblessed  products,  is  already 
past :  a  new  century  is  already  come.  The  old  un- 
blessed products  and  performances,  as  solid  as  they 
look,  are  phantasms,  preparing  speedily  to  vanish.  To 
this  and  the  other  noisy,  very  great-looking  simulacrum 
with  the  whole  world  huzzahing  at  its  heels,  he  can 
say,  composedly  stepping  aside  :  "  Thou  art  not  true  ; 
thou  art  not  extant,  only  semblant ;  go  thy  way  !  " 
Yes,  hollow  formulism,  gross  Benthanism  and  other 
unheroic  atheistic  insincerity  is  visibly  and  even  rap- 
_idly  declining.  An  unbelieving  eighteenth  century  is 
but  an  exception — such  as  now  and  then  occurs.  I 
prophesy  that  the  world  will  once  more  become  sin- 
cere j  a  believing  world  ;  with  many  heroes  in  it,  a 
heroic  world  !  It  will  then  be  a  victorious  world  ; 
never  till  then. 

Or  indeed  what  of  the  world  and  its  victories  ?  Men 
speak  too  much  about  the  world.  Each  one  of  us 
here,  let  the  world  go  how  it  will,  and  be  victorious  or 
not  victorious,  has  he  not  a  life  of  his  own  to  lead  ? 
One  life ;  a  little  gleam  of  time  between  two  eternities  ; 
no  second  chance  to  us  fore  verm  ore  !  It  were  well  for 
us  to  live  not  as  fools  and  simulacra,  but  as  wise  and 
realities.  The  world's  being  saved  will  not  save  us ; 
nor  the  world's  being  lost  destroy  us.  We  should  look 
to  ourselves  :  there  is  great  merit  here  in  the  "duty  of 
staying  at  home !  "  And,  on  the  whole,  to  say  truth, 
I  never  heard  of  "  worlds  "  being  "  saved  "  in  any  other 
way.  That  mania  of  saving  worlds  is  itself  a  piece  of 
the  eighteenth  century  with  its  windy  sentimentalism. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  209 

Let  us  not  follow  it  too  far.  For  the  saving  of  the 
world  I  will  trust  confidently  to  the  Maker  of  the 
world  ;  and  look  a  little  to  my  own  saving,  which  I  am 
more  competent  to  !  In  brief,  for  the  world's  sake  and 
for  our  own,  we  will  rejoice  greatly  that  skepticism,  in- 
sincerity, mechanical  atheism,  with  all  their  poison- 
dews,  are  going  and  as  good  as  gone. 

Now  it  was  under  such  conditions,  in  those  times  of 
Johnson,  that  our  men  of  letters  had  to  live.  Times 
in  which  there  was  properly  no  truth  in  life.  Old 
truths  had  fallen  nigh  dumb ;  the  new  lay  yet  hidden, 
not  trying  to  speak.  That  man's  life  here  below  was 
a  sincerity  and  fact  and  would  forever  continue  such, 
no  new  intimation,  in  that  dusk  of  the  world,  had  yet 
dawned.  No  intimation ;  not  even  any  French  revo- 
lution— which  we  define  to  be  a  truth  once  more, 
though  a  truth  clad  in  hellfire !  How  different  was 
the  Luther's  pilgrimage,  with  its  assured  goal,  from 
the  Johnson's,  girt  with  mere  traditions,  suppositions, 
grown  now  incredible,  unintelligible!  Mahomet's 
formulas  were  of  "  wood  waxed  and  oiled,"  and  could 
be  burned  out  of  one's  way :  poor  Johnson's  were  far 
more  difficult  to  burn.  The  Strong  man  will  ever  find 
work,  which  means  difficulty,  pain,  to  the  full  measure 
of  his  strength.  But  to  make  out  a  victory,  in  those 
circumstances  of  our  poor  hero  as  man  of  letters,  was 
perhaps  more  difficult  than  in  any.  Not  obstruction, 
disorganization,  Bookseller  Osborne  and  four-pence- 
halfpenny  a  day  ;  not  this  alone  ;  but  the  light  of  his 
own  soul  was  taken  from  him.  No  landmark  on  the 
earth  ;  and,  alas,  what  is  that  to  having  no  loadstar  in 
the  heaven  !  We  need  not  wonder  that  none  of  those 
three  men  rose  to  victory.  That  they  fought  truly  is 
the  highest  praise,  With  a  mournful  sympathy  we  will 


210  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

contemplate,  if  not  three  living  victorious  heroes,  as  I 
said,  the  tombs  of  three  fallen  heroes !  They  fell  for 
us  too;  making  a  way  for  us.  There  are  the  mount- 
ains which  they  hurled  abroad  in  their  confused  war  of 
the  giants ;  under  which,  their  strength  and  life  spent, 
they  now  lie  buried. 

I  have  already  written  of  these  three  literary  heroes, 
expressly  or  incidentally  ;  what  I  suppose  is  known  to 
most  of  you ;  what  need  not  be  spoken  or  written  a 
second  time.  They  concern  us  here  as  the  singular 
prophets  of  that  singular  age ;  for  such  they  virtually 
were ;  and  the  aspect  they  and  their  world  exhibit, 
under  this  point  of  view,  might  lead  us  into  reflections 
enough !  I  call  them,  all  three,  genuine  men  more  or 
less ;  faithfully,  for  most  part  unconsciously,  struggling, 
to  be  genuine  and  plant  themselves  on  the  everlasting 
truth  of  things.  This  to  a  degree  that  eminently  dis- 
tinguishes them  from  the  poor  artificial  mass  of  their 
contemporaries  ;  and  renders  them  worthy  to  be  con- 
sidered as  speakers,  in  some  measure,  of  the  everlast- 
ing truth,  as  prophets  in  that  age  of  theirs.  By  nature 
herself  a  noble  necessity  was  laid  on  them  to  be  so. 
They  were  men  of  such  magnitude  that  they  could  not 
live  on  unrealities — clouds,  froth  and  all  inanity  gave 
way  under  them  :  there  was  no  footing  for  them  but 
on  firm  earth  ;  no  rest  or  regular  motion  for  them,  if 
they  got  not  footing  there.  To  a  certain  extent, 
they  were  sons  of  nature  once  more  in  an  age  of  arti- 
fice ;  once  more,  original  men. 

As  for  Johnson,  I  have  always  considered  him  to  be, 
by  nature,  one  of  our  great  English  souls.  A  strong 
and  noble  man ;  so  much  left  undeveloped  in  him  to 
the  last ;  in  a  kindjier  element  what  might  he  not 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  211 

have  been — poet,  priest,  sovereign  ruler !  On  the 
whole,  a  man  must  not  complain  of  his  "  element,"  of 
his  "  time,"  or  the  like  ;  it  is  thriftless  work  doing  so. 
His  time  is  bad :  well  then,  he  is  there  to  make  it 
better !  Johnson's  youth  was  poor,  isolated,  hopeless, 
very  miserable.  Indeed,  it  does  not  seem  possible 
that,  in  any  the  favorablest  outward  circumstances, 
Johnson's  life  could  have  been  other  than  a  painful 
one.  The  world  might  have  had  more  of  profitable 
work  out  of  him,  or  less ;  but  his  effort  against  the 
world's  work  could  never  have  been  a  light  one.  Nat- 
ure,  in  return  for  his  nobleness,  had  said  to  him,  "  Live 
in  an  element  of  diseased  sorrow."  Nay,  perhaps  the 
sorrow  and  the  nobleness  were  intimately  and  even  in- 
separably connected  with  each  other.  At  all  events, 
poor  Johnson  had  to  go  about  girt  with  continual 
hypochondria,  physical  and  spiritual  pain.  Like  a 
Hercules  with  the  burning  Nessus'-shirt  on  him,  which 
shoots  in  on  him  dull  incurable  misery :  the  Nessus'- 
shirt  not  to  be  stripped  off,  which  is  his  own  natural 
skin !  In  this  manner  he  had  to  live.  Figure  him 
there,  with  his  scrofulous  diseases,  with  his  great 
greedy  heart  and  unspeakable  chaos  of  thoughts ; 
stalking  mournful  as  a  stranger  in  this  earth  ;  eagerly 
devouring  what  spiritual  thing  he  could  come  at : 
school-languages  and  other  merely  grammatical  stuff, 
if  there  were  nothing  better !  The  largest  soul  that 
was  in  all  England;  and  provision  made  for  it  of 
"  fourpence-halfpenny  a  day."  Yet  a  giant  invincible 
soul ;  a  true  man's.  One  remembers  always  that  story 
of  the  shoes  at  Oxford :  the  rough,  seamy-faced,  raw^ 
boned  college  servitor  stalking  about,  in  winter-season, 
with  his  shoes  worn  out ;  how  the  charitable  gentleman 
commoner  secretly  places  a  new  pair  at  his  door ;  and 


212  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

the  rawboned  servitor,  lifting  them,  looking  at  them 
near,  with  his  dim  eyes,  with  what  thoughts — pitches 
them  out  of  the  window !  Wet  feet,  mud,  frost, 
hunger  or  what  you  will ;  but  not  beggar}^ :  we  cannot 
stand  beggary !  Rude  stubborn  self-help  here ;  a 
whole  world  of  squalor,  rudeness,  confused  misery  and 
want,  yet  of  nobleness  and  manf ulness  withal.  It  is  a 
type  of  the  man's  life,  this  pitching  away  of  the  shoes. 
An  original  man — not  a  second-hand,  borrow  ing  or  beg- 
ging man.  Let  us  stand  on  our  own  basis,  at  any  rate ! 
On  such  shoes  as  we  ourselves  can  get.  On  frost  and 
mud,  if  you  will,  but  honestly  on  that — on  the  reality 
and  substance  which  nature  gives  us,  not  on  the 
semblance,  on  the  thing  she  has  given  another  than 
us ! 

And  yet  with  all  this  rugged  pride  of  manhood  and 
self-help,  was  there  ever  soul  more  tenderly  affection- 
ate, loyally  submissive  to  what  was  really  higher  than 
_he?  Great  souls  are  always  loyally  submissive,  rever- 
ent to  what  is  over  them ;  only  small  mean  souls  are 
otherwise.  I  could  not  find  a  better  proof  of  what  I 
said  the  other  day,  "  That  the  sincere  man  was  by  nat- 
ure the  obedient  man ;  that  only  in  a  world  of  heroes 
was  there  loyal  obedience  to  the  heroic."  The  essence 
of  ofiginality  is  not  that  it  be  new  :  Johnson  believed 
altogether  in  the  old  ;  he  found  the  old  opinions  cred- 
ible for  him,  fit  for  him ;  and  a  right  heroic  manner 
lived  under  them.  He  is  well  worth  study  in  regard 
to  that.  For  we  are  to  say  that  Johnson  was  far  other 
than  a  mere  man  of  words  and  formulas ;  he  was  a 
man  of  truths  and  facts,  lie  stood  by  the  old  formu- 
las ;  the  happier  was  it  for  him  that  he  could  so  stand : 
but  in  all  formulas  that  he  could  stand  by,  there  needed 
to  be  a  most  genuine  substance.  Very  curious  how, 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  213 

in  that  poor  paper-age,  so  barren,  artificial,  thick-quilted 
with  pedantries,  hearsays,  the  great  fact  of  this  uni- 
verse glared  in,  forever  wondftftul,  indubitable,  un- 
speakable, divine-infernal,  upon  this  man  too !  How 
he  harmonized  his  formulas  with  it,  how  he  managed 
at  all  under  such  circumstances  :  that  is  a  thing  worth 
seeing.  A  thing  "  to  be  looked  at  with  reverence,  with 
pity,  with  awe."  That  church  of  St.  Clement  Danes, 
where  Johnson  still  worshiped  in  the  era  of  Voltaire,  is 
to  me  a  venerable  place. 

It  was  in  virtue  of  his  sincerity,  of  his  speaking 
still  in  some  sort  from  the  heart  of  nature,  though  in 
the  current  artificial  dialect,  that  Johnson  was  a 
prophet.  Are  not  all  dialects  "  artificial  ?  "  Artificial 
things  are  not  all  false — nay  every  true  product  of 
nature  will  infallibly  shape  itself ;  we  may  say  all  arti- 
ficial things  are,  at  the  starting  of  them,  true.  "What 
we  call  "  formulas  "  are  not  in  their  origin  bad  ;  they 
are  indispensably  good.  Formula  is  method,  habitude  ; 
found  wherever  man  is  found.  Formulas  fashion  them- 
selves as  paths  do,  as  beaten  highways,  leading  to  ward 
some  sacred  or  high  object,  whither  many  men  are 
bent.  Consider  it.  One  man,  full  of  heartfelt  earnest 
impulse,  finds  out  a  way  of  doing  somewhat — were  it 
of  uttering  his  soul's  reverence  for  the  highest,  were  it 
but  of  fitly  saluting  his  fellow-man.  An  inventor  was 
needed  to  do  that,  a  poet ;  he  has  articulated  the  dim- 
struggling  thought  that  dwelled  in  his  own  and  many 
hearts.  This  is  his  way  of  doing  that ;  these  are  his 
footsteps,  the  beginning  of  a  "  path."  And  now  see  : 
the  second  man  travels  naturally  in  the  footsteps  of 
his  ioregoer,  it  is  the  easiest  method.  In  the  footsteps 
of  his  foregoer ;  yet  with  improvements,  with  changes 
where  sack  seein  good ;  at  all  events  with  enlarge- 


214  LECTURES  ON  IIKROES. 

ments,  the  path  ever  widening  itself  as  more  travel  it 
—till  at  last  there  is  a  broad  highway  whereon  the 
whole  world  may  travel  and  drive.  While  there  re- 
mains a  city  or  shrine,  or  any  reality  to  drive  to,  at 
the  farther  end,  the  highway  shall  be  right  welcome  ! 
"When  the  city  is  gone,  we  will  forsake  the  highway. 
In  this  manner  all  institutions,  practices,  regulated 
things  in  the  world  have  come  into  existence  and  gone 
out  of  existence.  Formulas  all  begin  by  being  full  of 
substance  ;  you  may  call  them  the  skin,  the  articulation 
into  shape,  into  limbs  and  skin,  of  a  substance  that  is 
already  there :  they  had  not  been  there  otherwise. 
Idols,  as  we  said,  are  not  idolatrous  till  they  become 
doubtful,  empty  for  the  worshiper's  heart.  Much  as 
we  talk  against  formulas,  I  hope  no  one  of  us  is  ignor- 
ant withal  of  the  significance  of  true  formulas ;  that 
they  were  and  will  ever  be,  the  indispensablest  furnit- 
ure of  our  habitation  in  this  world. 

Mark,  too,  how  little  Johnson  boasts  of  his  "  sincer- 
ity." He  has  no  suspicion  of  his  being  particularly 
anything !  A  hard-struggling,  wea^-hearted  man,  or 
"  scholar  "  as  he  calls  himself,  trying  hard  to  get  some 
honest  livelihood  in  the  world,  not  to  starve,  but  to 
live — without  stealing  !  A  noble  unconsciousness  is  in 
him.  He  does  not  "  engrave  truth  on  his  watch-seal ;" 
no,  but  he  stands  by  truth,  speaks  by  it,  works  and 
lives  by  it.  Thus  it  ever  is.  Think  of  it  once  more. 
The  man  whom  nature  has  appointed  to  do  great 
things  is,  first  of  all,  furnished  with  that  openness  to 
nature  which  renders  him  incapable  of  being  msincere ! 
To  his  large,  open,  deep-feeling  heart  nature  is  a  fact: 
all  hearsay  is  hearsay  ;  the  unspeakable  greatness  of 
this  mystery  of  life,  let  him  acknowledge  it  or  not, 
nay  even  though  he  seem  to  forget  it  or  deny  it,  is. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.       215 

ever  present  to  him — fearful  and  wonderful,  on  this 
hand  and  on  that.  He  has  a  basis  of  sincerity  ;  un- 
recognized, because  never  questioned  or  capable  of 
question.  Mirabeau,  Mahomet,  Cromwell,  Napoleon  : 
all  the  great  men  I  ever  heard  of  have  this  as  the  pri- 
mary material  of  them.  Innumerable  commonplace 
men  are  debating,  are  talking  everywhere  their  com- 
monplace doctrines,  which  they  have  learned  by  logic, 
by  rote,  at  second-hand :  to  that  kind  of  man  all  this  is 
still  nothing.  He  must  have  truth  ;  truth  which  he 
feels  to  be  true.  How  shall  he  stand  otherwise  ?  His 
whole  soul,  at  all  moments,  in  all  ways,  tells  him  that 
there  is  no  standing.  He  is  under  the  noble  necessity 
of  being  true.  Johnson's  way  of  thinking  about  this 
world  is  not  mine,  any  more  than  Mahomet's  was : 
but  I  recognize  the  everlasting  element  of  heart-sm- 
cerity  in  both ;  and  see  with  pleasure  how  neither  of 
them  remains  ineffectual.  Neither  of  them  is  as  chaff 
sown ;  in  both  of  them  is  something  which  the  seed- 
field  will  grow. 

Johnson  was  a  prophet  to  his  people ;  preached  a 
gospel  to  them — as  all  like  him  always  do.  The  high- 
est gospel  he  preached  we  may  describe  as  a  kind  of 
moral  prudence:  "in  a  world  where  much  is  to  be 
done  and  little  is  to  be  known,"  see  how  you  will  do  it  I 
A  thing  well  worth  preaching.  "A  world  where  much 
is  to  be  done  and  little  is  to  be  known :  "  do  not  sink 
yourselves  in  boundless  bottomless  abysses  of  doubt, 
of  wretched  god-forgetting  unbelief — you  were  miser- 
able then,  powerless,  mad  :  how  could  you  do  or  work 
at  all  ?  Such  gospel  Johnson  preached  and  taught — 
coupled,  theoretically  and  practically,  with  this  other 
great  gospel,  u Clear  your  mind  of  cant!"  Have  no 
trade  with  cant :  stand  on  the  cold  mud  in  the  frosty 


216  LECTURES  ON  H URGES. 

weather,  but  let  it  be  in  your  own  real  torn  shoes : 
"  that  will  be  better  for  you,"  as  Mahomet  says !  I 
call  this,  I  call  these  two  things  joined  together,  a  great 
gospel,  the  greatest  perhaps  that  was  possible  at  that 
time. 

Johnson's  writings,  which  once  had  such  currency 
and  celebrity,  are  now,  as  it  were,  disowned  by  the 
young  generation.  It  is  not  wonderful ;  Johnson's 
opinions  are  fast  becoming  obsolete :  but  his  style  of 
thinking  and  of  living,  we  may  hope,  will  never  be- 
come obsolete.  I  find  in  Johnson's  book  the  indisput- 
ablest  traces  of  a  great  intellect  and  great  heart — ever 
welcome,  under  what  obstructions  and  perversions 
soever.  They  are  sincere  words,  those  of  his ;  he  means 
things  by  them.  A  wondrous  buckram  style — the  best 
he  could  get  to  then  ;  a  measured  grandiloquence,  step- 
ping or  rather  stalking  along  in  a  very  solemn  way, 
grown  obsolete  now  ;  sometimes  a  tumid  size  of  phrase- 
ology not  in  proportion  to  the  contents  of  it :  all  this 
you  will  put  up  with.  For  the  phraseology,  tumid  or 
not,  has  always  something  within  it.  So  many  beauti- 
ful styles  and  books,  with  nothing  in  them — a  man  is  a 
malefactor  to  the  world  who  writes  such  !  They  are 
the  avoidable  kind !  Had  Johnson  left  nothing  but 
his  "  Dictionary,"  one  might  have  traced  there  a  great 
intellect,  a  genuine  man.  Looking  to  its  clearness  of 
definition,  its  general  solidity,  honesty,  insight  and 
successful  method,  it  may  be  called  the  best  of  all  dic- 
tionaries. There  is  in  it  a  kind  of  architectural  noble- 
ness ;  it  stands  there  like  a  great  solid  square-built 
edifice,  finished,  symmetrically  complete  :  you  judge 
that  a  true  builder  did  it. 

One  word,  in  spite  of  our  haste,  must  be  granted  to 
poor  Bozzy.  He  passes  for  a  mean,  inflated,  glutton- 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  21 7 

ous  creature ;  and 'was  so  in  many  senses.  Yet  the 
fact  of  his  reverence  for  Johnson  will  ever  remain  note- 
worthy. The  foolish  conceited  Scotch  Laird,  the  most 
conceited  man  of  his  time,  approaching  in  such  awe- 
struck attitude  the  great  dusty  irascible  pedagogue  in 
his  mean  garret  there :  it  is  a  genuine  reverence  for 
excellence ;  a  worship  for  heroes,  at  a  time  when 
neither  heroes  nor  worship  were  surmised  to  exist. 
Heroes,  it  would  seem,  exist  always,  and  a  certain 
worship  of  them !  We  will  also  take  the  liberty  to 
deny  altogether  that  of  the  witty  Frenchman,  that  no 
man  is  a  hero  to  his  valet-de-chambre.  Or  if  so,  it  is 
not  the  hero's  blame,  but  the  valet's :  that  his  soul, 
namely,  is  a  mean  valet-soul !  He  expects  his  hero  to 
advance  in  royal  stage-trappings,  with  measured  steps, 
trains  borne  behind  him,  trumpets  sounding  before  him. 
It  should  stand  rather,  no  man  can  be  a  grand-mon- 
arque  to  his  valet-de-chambre.  Strip  your  Louis  Quatorze 
of  his  king-gear,  and  there  is  left  nothing  but  a  poor 
forked  raddish  with  a  head  fantastically  carved — admir- 
able to  no  valet.  The  valet  does  not  know  a  hero  when 
he  sees  him  !  Alas,  no  :  it  requires  a  kind  of  hero  to 
do  that — and  one  of  the  world's  wants,  in  this  as  in 
other  senses,  is  for  most  part  want  of  such. 

On  the  whole,  shajl  we  not  say,  that  Boswell's  ad- 
miration was  well  bestowed  ;  that  he  could  have  found 
no  soul  in  all  England  so  worthy  of  bending  down  be- 
fore ?  Shall  we  not  say,  of  this  great  mornful  Johnson 
too,  that  he  guided  his  difficult  confused  existence 
wisely  ;  led  it  well,  like  a  right  valiant  man !  That 
waste  chaos  of  authorship  by  trade ;  that  waste  chaos 
of  skepticism  in  religion  and  politics,  in  life-theory  and 
life-practice;  in  his  poverty,  in  his  dust  and  dimness, 
with  the  sick  body  and  the  rusty  coat :  he  made  it  do 


218  LECTURES  ON  BEROU8. 

for  him,  like  a  brave  man.  Not  wholly  without  a 
loadstar  in  the  eternal ;  he  had  still  a  loadstar,  as  the 
brave  all  need  to  have :  with  his  eye  set  on  that,  he 
would  change  his  course  for  nothing  in  these  confused 
vortices  of  the  lower  sea  of  time.  "  To  the  spirit  of 
lies,  bearing  death  and  hunger,  he  would  in  no  wise 
strike  his  flag."  Brave  old  Samuel :  ultimus  Roman- 
orum  ! 

Of  Kousseau  and  his  heroism  I  cannot  say  so  much. 
He  is  not  what  I  call  a  strong  man.  A  morbid,  excit- 
able, spasmodic  man;  at  best,  intense  rather  than 
strong.  He  had  not  "  the  talent  of  silence,"  an  invalu- 
able talent ;  which  few  Frenchmen,  or  indeed  men  of 
any  sort  in  these  times,  excel  in  !  The  suffering  man 
ought  really  "to  consume  his  own  smoke ;"  there  is  no 
good  in  emitting  smoke  till  you  have  made  it  into  fire 
—which,  in  the  metaphorical  sense  too,  all  smoke  is 
capable  of  becoming!  Rousseau  has  not  depth  or 
width,  not  calm  force  for  difficulty ;  the  first  charac- 
teristic of  true  greatness.  A  fundamental  mistake  to 
call  vehemence  and  rigidity  strength !  A  man  is  not 
strong  who  takes  convulsion-fits ;  though  six  men  can- 
not hold  him  then.  He  that  can  walk  under  the  heav- 
iest weight  without  staggering,  he  is  the  strong  man. 
We  need  forever,  especially  in  these  loud  shrieking 
days  to  remind  ourselves  of  that.  A  man  who  cannot 
hold  his  peace,  till  the  time  comes  for  speaking  and 
acting,  is  no  right  man. 

Poor  Rousseau's  face  is  to  me  expressive  of  him.  A 
high  but  narrow  contracted  intensity  in  its  bony  brows; 
deep,  straight-set  eyes,  in  which  there  is  something  be- 
wildered-looking  —  bewildered,  peering  with  lynx- 
eagerness.  A  face  full  of  misery,  even  ignoble  misery 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  Of1  LETTERS.  219 

and  also  of  the  antagonism  against  that ;  something 
mean,  plebeian  there,  redeemed  only  by  intensity :  the 
face  of  what  is  called  a  fanatic — a  sadly  contracted 
hero  !  We  name  him  here  because,  with  all  his  draw- 
backs and  they  are  many,  he  has  the  first  and  chief 
characteristic  of  a  hero  :  he  is  heartily  in  earnest.  In 
earnest,  if  ever  man  was ;  as  none  of  these  French 
philosophers  were.  Kay,  one  would  say,  of  an  earnest- 
ness too  great  for  his  otherwise  sensitive,  rather  feeble 
nature ;  and  which  indeed  in  the  end  drove  him  into 
the  strangest  incoherences,  almost  delirations.  There 
had  come,  at  last,  to  be  a  kind  of  madness  in  him : 
his  ideas  possessed  him  like  demons ;  hurried  him  so 
about,  drove  him  over  steep  places ! 

The  fault  and  misery  of  Rousseau  was  what  we 
easily  name  by  a  single  word,  egoism  •  which  is  indeed 
the  source  and  summary  of  all  faults  and  miseries 
whatsoever.  He  had  not  perfected  himself  into  victory 
over  mere  desire  ;  a  mean  hunger,  in  many  sorts,  was 
still  the  motive  principle  of  him.  I  am  afraid  he  was 
a  very  vain  man  ;  hungry  for  the  praises  of  men.  You 
remember  Genlis'  experience  of  him.  She  took  Jean 
Jacques  to  the  theater  ;  he  bargaining  for  a  strict  in- 
cognito— "lie  would  not  be  seen  there  for  the  world  !  " 
The  curtain  did  happen  nevertheless  to  be  drawn 
aside :  the  pit  recognized  Jean  Jacques,  but  took  no 
great  notice  of  him !  He  expressed  the  bitterest  in- 
dignation ;  gloomed  all  evening,  spoke  no  other  than 
surly  words.  The  glib  countess  remained  entirely 
convinced  that  his  anger  was  not  at  being  seen,  but  at 
not  being  applauded  when  seen.  How  the  whole  nat- 
ure of  the  man  is  poisoned  ;  nothing  but  suspicion,  self- 
isolation,  fierce  moody  ways  !  He  could  not  live  with 
anybody.  A  man  of  some  rank  from  the  country,  who 


220  LWOTVRB8  ON  HEROES. 

visited  him  often  and  used  to  sit  with  him,  expressing 
all  reverence  and  affection  for  him,  comes  one  day, 
finds  Jean  Jacques  full  of  the  sourest  unintelligible 
humor.  u  Monsieur,"  said  Jean  Jacques,  with  flaming 
eyes,  "  I  know  why  you  come  here.  You  come  to  see 
what  a  poor  life  I  lead ;  how  little  is  in  my  poor  pot 
that  is  boiling  there.  Well,  look  into  the  pot !  There 
is  half  a  pound  of  meat,  one  carrot  and  three  onions ; 
that  is  all ;  go  and  tell  the  whole  world  that,  if  you 
like,  monsieur  ! "  A  man  of  this  sort  was  far  gone. 
The  whole  world  got  itself  supplied  with  anecdotes, 
for  light  laughter,  for  a  certain  theatrical  interest, 
from  these  perversions  and  contortions  of  poor  Jean 
Jacques.  Alas,  to  him  they  were  not  laughing  or 
theatrical ;  too  real  to  him !  The  contortions  of  a 
dying  gladiator :  the  crowded  amphitheater  looks  on 
with  entertainment :  but  the  gladiator  is  in  agonies  and 
dying. 

And  yet  this  Rousseau,  as  we  say,  with  his  passion- 
ate appeals  to  mothers,  with  his  control-social,  with  his 
celebrations  of  nature,  even  of  savage  life  in  nature, 
did  once  more  touch  upon  reality,  struggle  toward  re- 
ality ;  was  doing  the  function  of  a  prophet  to  his  time. 
As  Tie  could  and  as  the  time  could  !  Strangely  through 
all  that  defacement,  degradation  and  almost  madness, 
there  is  in  the  inmost  heart  of  poor  Rousseau  a  spark 
of  real  heavenly  fire.  Once  more,  out  of  the  element 
of  that  withered  mocking  philosophism,  skepticism  and 
persiflage,  there  has  arisen  in  this  man  the  ineradicable 
feeling  and  knowledge  that  this  life  of  ours  is  true; 
not  a  skepticism,  theorem,  or  persiflage,  but  a  fact,  an 
awful  reality.  Nature  has  made  that  revelation  to 
him  ;  had  ordered  him  to  speak  it  out.  He  got  it 
spoken  out ;  if  not  well  and  clearly,  then  ill  and  dimly 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  221 

— as  clearly  as  he  could.  Nay  what  are  all  errors  and 
perversities  of  his,  even  those  stealings  of  ribbons,  aim- 
less confused  miseries  and  vagabondisms,  if  we  will  in- 
terpret them  kindly,  but  the  blinkard  dazzlement  and 
staggerings  to  and  fro  of  a  man  sent  on  an  errand  he 
is  too  weak  for,  by  a  path  he  cannot  yet  find  ?  Men 
are  led  by  strange  ways.  One  should  have  toler- 
ance for  a  man,  hope  of  him;  leave  him  to  try  yet 
what  he  will  do.  While  life  lasts,  hope  lasts  for 
every  man. 

Of  Rousseau's  literary  talents,  greatly  celebrated  still 
among  his  countrymen,  I  do  not  say  much.  His  books, 
like  himself,  are  what  I  call  unhealthy  ;  not  the  good  sort 
of  books.  There  is  a  sensuality  in  Rousseau.  Combined 
with  such  an  intellectual  gift  as  his,  it  makes  pictures 
of  a  certain  gorgeous  attractiveness  :  but  they  are  not 
genuinely  poetical.  Not  white  sunlight ;  something 
operatic ;  a  kind  of  rosepink,  artificial  bedizenment. 
It  is  frequent,  or  rather  it  is  universal,  among  the 
French  since  his  time.  Madame  de  Stael  has  some- 
thing of  it ;  St.  Pierre ;  and  down  onward  to  the  present 
astonishing  convulsionary  "literature  of  despera- 
tion," it  is  everywhere  abundant.  That  same  rosepink  is 
not  the  right  hue.  Look  at  a  Shakespeare,  at  a  Goethe, 
even  at  a  Walter  Scott !  He  who  has  once  seen 
into  this,  has  seen  the  difference  of  the  true  and 
the  sham-true,  and  will  discriminate  them  ever  after- 
ward. 

We  had  to  observe  in  Johnson  how  much  good  a 
prophet,  under  all  disadvantages  and  disorganizations, 
can  accomplish  for  the  world.  In  Rousseau  we  are 
called  to  look  rather  at  the  fearful  amount  of  evil 
which,  under  such  disorganization,  may  accompany  the 
good.  Historically  it  is  a  most  pregnant  spectacle, 


222  LECTURES  ON  HmOE8. 

that  of  Kousseau.  Banished  into  Paris  garrets,  in  the 
gloomy  company  of  his  own  thoughts  and  necessities 
there ,  driven  from  post  to  pillar ;  fretted,  exasperated 
till  the  heart  of  him  went  mad,  he  had  grown  to  feel 
deeply  that  the  world  was  not  his  friend  nor  the 
world's  law.  It  was  expedient,  if  anyway  possible, 
that  such  a  man  should  not  have  been  set  in  flat  hos- 
tility with  the  world.  He  could  be  cooped  into  garrets, 
laughed  at  as  a  maniac,  left  to  starve  like  a  wild-beast 
in  his  cage — but  he  could  not  be  hindered  from  setting 
the  world  on  fire.  The  French  revolution  found  its 
evangelists  in  Kousseau.  His  semi-delirious  specula- 
tions on  the  miseries  of  civilized  life,  the  preferability 
of  the  savage  to  the  civilized,  and  suchlike,  helped  well 
to  produce  a  whole  delirium  in  France  generally.  True 
you  may  well  ask,  what  could  the  world,  the  govern- 
ors of  the  world,  do  with  such  a  man  ?  Difficult  to 
say  what  the  governors  of  the  world  could  do  with 
him  !  What  he  could  do  with  them  is  unhappily  clear 
enough — guillotine  a  great  many  of  them!  Enough 
now  of  Rousseau. 

It  was  a  curious  phenomenon,  in  the  withered,  unbe- 
lieving, second-hand  eighteenth  century,  that  of  a  hero 
starting  up,  among  the  artificial  pasteboard  figures  and 
productions,  in  the  guise  of  Robert  Burns.  Like  a 
little  well  in  the  rocky  desert  places — like  a  sudden 
splendor  of  heaven  in  the  artificial  Vauxhall !  People 
knew  not  what  to  make  of  it.  They  took  it  for 
a  piece  of  the  Vauxhall  fire-work ;  alas,  it  let  itself 
be  so  taken,  though  struggling  half-blindly,  as  in 
bitterness  of  death,  against  that !  Perhaps  no  man 
had  such  a  false  reception  from  his  fellow-men.  Once 
more  a  very  wasteful  life-drama  was  enacted  under  the 
sun. 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  •  223 

The  tragedy  of  Burn's  life  is  known  to  all  of  you. 
Surely  we  may  say,  if  discrepancy  between  place  held 
and  place  merited  constitute  perverseness  of  lot  for  a 
man,  no  lot  could  be  more  perverse  than  Burns'. 
Among  those  second-hand  acting-figures,  mimes  for 
most  part,  of  the  eighteenth  century,  once  more  a 
giant  original  man  ;  one  of  those  men  who  reach  down 
to  the  perennial  deeps,  who  take  rank  with  the  heroic 
among  men :  and  he  was  born  in  a  poor  Ayrshire 
hut.  The  largest  soul  of  all  the  British  lands  came 
among  us  in  the  shape  of  a  hard-handed  Scottish 
peasant. 

His  father,  a  poor  toiling  man,  tried  various  things ; 
did  not  succeed  in  any  ;  was  involved  in  continual  diffi- 
culties. The  steward,  factor  as  the  Scotch  call  him, 
used  to  send  letters  and  threatenings,  Burns  says  : 
"  which  threw  us  all  into  tears."  The  brave,  hard- 
toiling,  hard-suffering  father,  his  brave  heroine  of  a 
wife ;  and  those  children,  of  whom  Robert  was  one  ! 
In  this  earth,  so  wide  otherwise,  no  shelter  for  them. 
The  letters  "  threw  us  all  into  tears  : "  figure  it.  The 
brave  father,  I  say  always — a  silent  hero  and  poet ; 
without  whom  the  son  had  never  been  a  speaking  one! 
Burns'  schoolmaster  came  afterward  to  London,  learned 
what  good  society  was ;  but  declares  that  in  no  meet- 
ing of  men  did  he  ever  enjoy  better  discourse  than  at 
the  hearth  of  this  peasant.  And  this  poor  "  seven 
acres  of  nursery-ground  " — not  that,  nor  the  miserable 
patch  of  clay-farm,  nor  anything  he  tried  to  get  a 
living  by,  would  prosper  with  him ;  he  had  a  sore  un^ 
equal  battle  all  his  days.  But  he  stood  to  it  valiantly; 
a  wise,  faithful,  unconquerable  man — swallowing-down 
how  many  sore  sufferings  daily  into  silence ;  fighting 
like  an  unseen  hero — nobody  publishing  newspaper 


224  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

paragraphs  about  his  nobleness ;  voting  pieces  of  plate 
to  him  !  However,  he  was  not  lost :  nothing  is  lost. 
Robert  is  there ;  the  outcome  of  him — and  indeed  of 
many  generations  of  such  as  him. 

This  Burns  appeared  under  every  disadvantage  :  un- 
instructed,  poor,  born  only  to  hard  manual  toil ;  and 
writing,  when  it  came  to  that,  in  a  rustic  special  dialect, 
known  only  to  a  small  province  of  the  country  he  lived 
in.  Had  he  written,  even  what  he  did  write,  in  the 
general  language  of  England,  I  doubt  not  he  had  al- 
ready become  universally  recognized  as  being,  or  cap- 
able to  be,  one  of  our  greatest  men.  That  he  should 
have  tempted  so  many  to  penetrate  through  the 
rough  husk  of  that  dialect  of  his,  is  proof  that  there 
lay  something  far  from  common  within  it.  He  has 
gained  a  certain  recognition,  and  is  continuing  to  do  so 
over  all  quarters  of  our  wide  Saxon  world  :  whereso- 
ever a  Saxon  dialect  is  spoken,  it  begins  to  be  under- 
stood, by  personal  inspection  of  this  and  the  other, 
that  one  of  the  most  considerable  Saxon  men  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was  an  Ayrshire  peasant  named 
Robert  Burns.  Yes,  I  will  say,  here  too  was  a  piece 
of 'the  right  Saxon  stuff:  strong  as  the  Harz-rock, 
rooted  in  the  depths  of  the  world — rock,  yet  with  wells 
of  living  softness  in  it !  A  wild  impetuous  whirlwind 
of  passion  and  faculty  slumbered  quiet  there  ;  such 
heavenly  melody  dwelling  in  the  heart  of  it.  A  noble 
rough  genuineness ;  homely,  rustic,  honest ;  true  sim- 
plicity of  strength ;  with  its  lightning-fire,  with  its 
soft  dewy  pity — like  the  old  JSTorse  Thor,  the  peasant- 
god! 

Burns'  brother  Gilbert,  a  man  of  much  sense  and 
worth,  has  told  me  that  Robert,  in  his  young  days,  in 
spite  of  their  hardship,  was  usually  the  gayest  of 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.       225 

speech  ;  a  fellow  of  infinite  frolic,  laughter,  sense  and 
heart ;  far  pleasanter  to  hear  there,  stripped  cutting 
peats  in  the  bog,  or  suchlike,  than  he  ever  afterward 
knew  him.  I  can  well  believe  it.  This  basis  of  mirth 
("fond  gaillard"  as  old  Marquis  Mirabeau  calls  it),  a 
primal-element  of  sunshine  and  joyfulness,  coupled 
with  his  other  deep  and  earnest  qualities,  is  one  of  the 
most  attractive  characteristics  of  Burns.  A  large 
fund  of  hope  dwells  in  him  ;  spite  of  his  tragical  history, 
he  is  not  a  mourning  man.  He  shakes  his  sorrows 
gallantly  aside ;  bounds  forth  victorious  over  them. 
It  is  as  the  lion  shaking  "  dew-drops  from  his  mane  ; 
as  the  swift-bounding  horse,  that  laughs  at  the  shaking 
of  the  spear.  But  indeed,  hope,  mirth,  of  the  sort  like 
Burns',  are  they  not  the  outcome  properly  of  warm 
generous  affection — such  as  is  the  beginning  of  all  to 
every  man ! 

You  would  think  it  strange  if  I  called  Burns  the 
most  gifted  British  soul  we  had  in  all  that  century  of 
his  :  and  yet  I  believe  the  day  is  coming  when  there 
will  be  little  danger  in  saying  so.  His  writings,  all 
that  he  did  under  such  obstructions,  are  only  a  poor 
fragment  of  him.  Professor  Stewart  remarked  very 
justly,  what  indeed  is  true  of  all  poets  good  for  much, 
that  his  poetry  was  not  any  particular  faculty ;  but 
the  general  result  of  a  naturally  vigorous  original  mind 
expressing  itself  in  that  way.  Burns'  gifts,  expressed 
in  conversation,  are  the  theme  of  all  that  ever  heard 
him.  All  kinds  of  gifts :  from  the  gracefulest  utter- 
ances of  courtesy,  to  the  highest  fire  of  passionate 
speech  ;  loud  floods  of  mirth,  soft  waitings  of  affection, 
laconic  emphasis,  clear  piercing  insight ;  all  was  in  him. 
Witty  duchesses  celebrate  him  as  a  man  whose  speech 
"  led  them  off  their  feet,"  This  is  beautiful ;  but  still 


226  LECTURES  ON,  HEROES. 

more  beautiful  that  which  Mr.  Lockhart  has  recorded, 
which  I  have  more  than  once  alluded  to,  How  the 
waiters  and  ostlers  at  inns  would  get  out  of  bed  and 
come  crowding  to  hear  this  man  speak  !  Waiters  and 
ostlers — they  too  were  men  and  here  was  a  man  !  I 
have  heard  much  about  his  speech ;  but  one  of  the 
best  things  I  ever  heard  of  it  was,  last  year,  from  a 
venerable  gentleman  long  familiar  with  him.  That  it 
was  speech  distinguished  by  always  having  something 
in  it.  "  He  spoke  rather  little  than  much,"  this  old 
man  told  me ;  "  sat  rather  silent  in  those  early  days, 
as  in  the  company  of  persons  above  him  ;  and  always 
when  he  did  speak,  it  was  to  throw  new  light  on  the 
matter."  I  know  not  why  any  one  should  ever  speak 
otherwise !  But  if  we  look  at  his  general  force  of  soul, 
his  healthy  robustness  everyway,  the  rugged  down- 
rightness,  penetration,  generous  valor  and  manful  ness 
that  was  in  him — where  shall  we  readily  find  a  better- 
gifted  man  ? 

Among  the  great  men  of  the  eighteenth  century,  I 
sometimes  feel  as  if  Burns  might  be  found  to  resemble 
Mirabeau  more  than  any  other.  They  differ  widely  in 
vesture;  yet  look  at  the  intrinsically.  There  is  the 
same  burly  thick-necked  strength  of  body  as  of  soul — 
built  in  both  cases,  on  what  the  old  marquis  calls  a 
fond  gaillard.  By  nature,  by  course  of  breeding, 
indeed  by  nation,  Mirabeau  has  much  more  of  bluster ; 
a  noisy,  forward,  unresting  man.  But  the  characteris- 
tic of  Mirabeau  too  is  veracity  and  sense,  power  of  true 
insight,  superiority  of  vision.  The  thing  that  he  says 
is  worth  remembering.  It  is  a  flash  of  insight  into 
some  object  or  other :  so  do  both  these  men  speak. 
The  same  raging  passions;  capable  too  in  both  of 
manifesting  themselves  as  the  tenderest  noble  affec- 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  22? 

dons.  Wit,  wild  laughter,  energy,  directness,  sincer- 
ity :  these  were  in  both.  The  types  of  the  two  men 
are  not  dissimilar.  Burns  too  could  have  governed, 
debated  in  national  assemblies ;  politicized,  as  few 
could.  Alas,  the  courage  which  had  to  exhibit  itself 
in  capture  of  smuggling  schooners  in  the  Solway  Frith  ; 
in  keeping  silence  over  so  much,  where  no  good  speech, 
but  only  inarticulate  rage  was  possible:  this  might 
have  bellowed  forth  Ushers  de  Breze  and  the  like ; 
and  made  itself  visible  to  all  men,  in  managing  of 
kingdoms,  in  ruling  of  great  ever-memorable  epochs ! 
But  they  said  to  him  reprovingly,  his  official  superiors 
said,  and  wrote :  "  You  are  to  work,  not  think."  Of 
your  t/iinking-f acuity,  the  greatest  in  this  land,  we 
have  no  need ;  you  are  to  gauge  beer  there ;  for  that 
only  are  you  wanted.  Very  notable — and  worth  men- 
tioning, though  Ave  know  what  is  to  be  said  and  an- 
swered !  As  if  thought,  power  of  thinking,  were  not 
at  all  times,  in  all  places  and  situations  of  the  world, 
precisely  the  thing  that  was  wanted.  The  fatal  man, 
is  he  not  always  the  imthinking  man,  the  man  who 
cannot  think  and  see;  but  only  grope,  and  hallucinate, 
and  missee  the  nature  of  the  thing  he  works  with  ? 
He  missees  it,  mistakes  it  as  we  say ;  takes  it  for  one 
thing,  and  it  is  another  thing — and  leaves  him  standing 
like  a  futility  there  !  He  is  the  fatal  man  ;  unuttera- 
bly fatal,  put  in  the  high  places  of  men.  "  Why  com- 
plain of  this  ?"  say  some :  "  Strength  is  mournfully 
denied  its  arena  ;  that  was  true  from  the  old."  Doubt- 
less ;  and  the  worse  for  the  arena,  answer  I !  Com- 
plaining profits  little  ;  stating  of  the  truth  may  profit. 
That  a  Europe,  with  its  French  revolution  just  break- 
ing out,  finds  no  need  of  a  Burns  except  for  gauging 
beer — is  a  thing  I,  for  one,  cannot  rejoice  at ! 


228  LECTURES  ON  UKROES. 

Once  more  We  have  to  say  here,  that  the  chief  quality 
of  Burns  is  the  sincerity  of  him.  So  in  his  poetry,  so 
in  his  life.  The  song  he  sings  is  not  of  fantasticalities; 
it  is  of  a  thing  felt,  really  there  ;  the  prime  merit  of 
this,  as  of  all  in  him,  and  of  his  life  generally,  is  truth. 
The  life  of  Burns  is  what  we  may  call  a  great  tragic 
sincerity.  A  sort  of  savage  sincerity — not  cruel,  far 
from  that ;  but  wild,  wrestling  naked  with  the  truth  of 
things.  In  that  sense,  there  is  something  of  the  savage 
in  all  great  men. 

Hero  worship — Odin,  Burns?  Well;  these  men  of 
letters  too  were  not  without  a  kind  of  hero  worship : 
but  what  a  strange  condition  has  that  got  into  now  ! 
The  waiters  and  ostlers  of  Scotch  inns,  prying  about 
the  door,  eager  to  catch  any  word  that  fell  from  Burns, 
were  doing  unconscious  reverence  to  the  heroic.  John- 
son had  his  Boswell  for  worshiper.  Rousseau  had 
worshipers  enough :  princes  calling  on  him  in  his 
mean  garret ;  the  great,  the  beautiful  doing  reverence 
to  the  poor  moonstruck  man.  For  himself  a  most  por- 
tentous contradiction  ;  the  two  ends  of  his  life  not  to 
be  brought  into  harmony.  He  sits  at  the  tables  of 
grandees ;  and  has  to  copy  music  for  his  own  living. 
He  cannot  even  get  his  music  copied.  "  By  dint  of 
dining  out,"  says  he,  "I  run  the  risk  of  dying  by  star- 
vation at  home."  For  his  worshipers  too  a  most 
questionable  thing!  If  doing  hero  worship  well  or 
badly  be  the  test  of  vital  well-being  or  ill-being  to  a 
generation,  can  we  say  that  these  generations  are  very 
first-rate?  And  yet  our  heroic  men  of  letters  do  teach 
govern,  are  kings,  priests,  or  what  you  like  to  call 
them ;  intrinsically  there  is  no  preventing  it  by  any 
means  whatever.  The  world  has  to  obey  him  who 
tkinks  and  sees  in  the  world.  The  world  can  alter  tho 


THE  HERO  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  229 

manner  of  that ;  can  either  have  it  as  blessed  continu- 
ous summer  sunshine,  or  unblessed  black  thunder  and 
tornado — with  unspeakable  difference  of  profit  for  the 
world  !  The  manner  of  it  is  very  alterable ;  the  mat- 
ter and  fact  of  it  is  not  alterable  by  any  power  under 
the  sky.  Light ;  or,  failing  that,  lightning :  the  world 
can  take  its  choice.  Not  whether  we  call  an  Odin  god, 
prophet,  priest,  or  what  we  call  him  ;  but  whether  we 
believe  the  word  he  tells  us :  there  it  all  lies.  If  it  be 
a  true  word,  we  shall  have  to  believe  it ;  believing  it, 
we  shall  have  to  do  it.  What  name  or  welcome  we 
give  him  or  it,  is  a  point  that  concerns  ourselves 
mainly.  It,  the  new  truth,  new  deeper  revealing  of  the 
secret  of  this  universe,  is  verily  of  the  nature  of  a 
message  from  on  high  ;  and  must  and  will  have  itself 
obeyed. 

My  last  remark  is  on  that  notablest  phasis  of  Burns' 
history — his  visit  to  Edinburgh.  Often  it  seems  to  me 
as  if  his  demeanor  there  were  the  highest  proof  he  gave 
of  what  a  fund  of  worth  and  genuine  manhood  was  in 
him.  If  we  think  of  it,  few  heavier  burdens  could  be 
laid  on  the  strength  of  a  man.  So  sudden ;  all  com- 
mon lionismt  which  ruins  innumerable  men,  was  as 
nothing  to  this.  It  is  as  if  Napoleon  had  been  made  a 
king  of,  not  gradually,  but  at  once  from  the  artillery 
lieutenancy  in  the  regiment  La  Fere.  Burns,  still  only 
in  his  twenty-seventh  year,  is  no  longer  even  a  plow- 
man ;  he  is  flying  to  the  West  Indies  to  escape  dis- 
grace and  a  jail.  This  month  he  is  a  ruined  peasant, 
his  wages  £7  a  year  and  these  gone  from  him  :  next 
month  he  is  in  the  blaze  of  rank  and  beauty,  handing 
down  jewelled  duchesses  to  dinner ;  the  cynosure  of 
all  eyes !  Adversary  is  sometimes  hard  upon  a  man  ; 
but  for  one  man  who  can  stand  prosperity,  there  are  a 


230  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

hundred  that  will  stand  adversity.  I  admire  much  the 
way  in  which  Burns  met  all  this.  Perhaps  no  man 
one  could  point  out,  was  ever  so  sorely  tried  and  so 
little  forgot  himself.  Tranquil,  unastonished ;  not 
abashed,  not  inflated,  neither  awkwardness  nor  affec- 
tation :  he  feels  that  he  there  is  the  manKobert  Burns ; 
that  the  "rank  is  but  the  guinea-stamp;"  that  the 
celebrity  is  but  the  candle-light,  which  will  show  what 
man,  not  in  the  least  make  him  a  better  or  other  man ! 
Alas,  it  may  readily,  unless  he  look  to  it,  make  him  a 
worse  man;  a  wretched  inflated  windbag  —  inflated 
till  he  burst  and  become  a  dead  lion ;  for  whom,  as 
some  one  has  said,  "there  is  no  resurrection  of  the  body;" 
worse  than  a  living  dog !  Burns  is  admirable  here. 

And  yet,  alas,  as  I  have  observed  elsewhere,  these 
lion-hunters  were  the  ruin  and  death  of  Burns.  It 
was  they  that  rendered  it  impossible  for  him  to  live ! 
They  gathered  round  him  in  his  farm :  hindered  his 
industry  ;  no  place  was  remote  enough  from  them.  He 
could  not  get  his  lion  ism  forgotten,  honestly  as  he  was 
disposed  to  do  so.  He  falls  into  discontents,  into 
miseries,  faults ;  the  world  getting  ever  more  desolate 
for  him  ;  health,  character,  peace  of  mind  all  gone — 
solitary  enough  now.  It  is  tragical  to  think  of ! 
These  men  came  but  to  see  him ;  it  was  out  of  no  sym- 
pathy with  him,  nor  no  hatred  to  him.  They  came  to 
get  a  little  amusement :  they  got  their  amusement — 
and  the  hero's  life  went  for  it! 

Kichter  says,  in  the  land  of  Sumatra  there  is  a  kind 
of  "  light-chafers,"  large  fire  flies,  which  people  stick 
upon  spits  and  illuminate  the  ways  with  at  night. 
Persons  of  condition  can  thus  travel  with  a  pleasant 
radiance,  which  they  much  admire.  Great  honor  to 
the  fire-flies.  But 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  231 


LECTUKE  VI  * 

THE   HERO   AS   KING.      CROMWELL,    NAPOLEON — MODERN 
REVOLUTIONISM. 

WE  COME  now  to  the  last  form  of  heroism;  that 
which  we  call  kingship.  The  commander  over  men ; 
he  to  whose  will  our  wills  are  to  be  subordinated,  and 
loyally  surrender  themselves,  and  find  there  welfare 
in  doing  so,  may  be  reckoned  the  most  important  of 
great  men.  He  is  practically  the  summary  for  us  of 
all  the  various  figures  of  heroism ;  priest,  teacher 
whatsoever  of  earthly  or  of  spiritual  dignity  we  can 
fancy  to  reside  in  a  man,  embodies  itself  here,  to  com- 
mand over  us,  to  furnish  us  with  constant  practical 
teaching,  to  tell  us  for  the  day  and  hour  what  we  are 
to  do.  He  is  called  rex,  regulator,  roi:  our  own  name 
is  still  better ;  king,  konning,  which  means  can-mug, 
able-man. 

Numerous  considerations,  pointing  toward  deep, 
questionable,  and  indeed  unfathomable  regions,  present 
themselves  here:  on  the  most  of  which  we  must  reso- 
lutely for  the  present  forbear  to  speak  at  all.  As 
Burke  said  that  perhaps  fair  trial  by  jury  was  the 
soul  of  government,  and  that  all  legislation,  adminis- 
tration, parliamentary  debating,  and  the  rest  of  it, 
went  on,  in  "order  to  bring  twelve  impartial  men  into 
a  jury-box  " — so,  by  much  stronger  reason,  may  I  say 

*Delivered  Friday,  May  22,  1840. 


232  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

here,  that  the  finding  of  your  ableman  and  getting  him 
invested  with  the  symbols  of  ability,  with  dignity, 
worship  (worth-ship),  royalty,  kinghood,  or  whatever 
we  call  it,  so  that  he  may  actually  have  room  to  guide 
according  to  his  faculty  of  doing  it — is  the  business, 
well  or  ill  accomplished,  of  all  social  procedure  what- 
soever in  this  world  !  Hustings  speeches,  parliament- 
ary motions,  reform  bills,  French  revolutions,  all  mean 
at  heart  this  ;  or  else  nothing.  Find  in  any  country 
the  ablest  man  that  exists  there  ;  raise  him  to  the  su- 
preme place,  and  loyally  reverence  him  :  you  have  a 
perfect  government  for  that  co'untry ;  no  ballot-box, 
parliamentary  eloquence,  voting,  constitution-building, 
or  other  machinery  whatsoever  can  improve  it  a  whit. 
It  is  in  the  perfect  state ;  an  ideal  country.  The  ablest 
man  ;  he  means  also  the  truest-hearted,  justest,  the 
noblest  man ;  what  he  tells  us  to  do  must  be  precisely 
the  wisest,  fittest,  that  we  could  anywhere  or  anyhow 
learn — the  thing  which  it  will  in  all  ways  behove  us, 
with  right  royal  thankfulness,  and  nothing  doubting,  to 
do!  Our  doing  and  life  were  then,  so  far  as  govern- 
ment could  regulate  it,  well  regulated ;  that  were  the 
ideal  of  constitutions. 

Alas,  we  know  very  well  that  ideals  can  never  be 
completely  embodied  in  practice.  Ideals  must  ever  lie  a 
very  great  way  off;  and  we  will  right  thankfully  content 
ourselves  with  any  not  intolerable  approximation 
thereto !  Let  no  man,  as  Schiller  says,  too  querulously 
"measure  by  a  scale  of  perfection  the  meager  product 
of  reality  "  in  this  poor  world  of  ours.  We  will  esteem 
him  no  wise  man ;  we  will  esteem  him  a  sickly,  discon- 
tented, foolish  man.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
never  to  be  forgotten  that  ideals  do  exist ;  that  if  they 
be  not  approximated  to  at  all,  the  whole  matter  goes 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  233 

to  wreck !  Infallibly.  No  bricklayer  builds  a  wall 
perfectly  perpendicular,  mathematically  this  is  not  pos- 
sible ;  a  certain  degree  of  perpendicularity  suffices  him; 
and  he,  like  a  good  bricklayer,  who  must  have  done 
with  his  job,  leaves  it  so.  And  yet  if  he  sways  too 
much  from  the  perpendicular ;  above  all,  if  he  throw 
plummet  and  level  quite  away  from  him,  and  pile  brick 

on  brick  heedless,  just  as  it  comes  to  hand Such 

bricklayer,  I  think,  is  in  a  bad  way.  He  has  forgotten 
himself :  but  the  law  of  gravitation  does  not  forget  to 
act  on  him  ;  he  and  his  wall  rush  down  into  confused 
welter  of  ruin ! 

This  is  the  history  of  all  rebellions,  French  revolu- 
tions, social  explosions  in  ancient  or  modern  times. 
You  have  put  the  too  viable  man  at  the  head  of  af- 
fairs !  The  too  ignoble,  unvaliant,  fatuous  man.  You 
have  forgotten  that  there  is  any  rule,  or  natural  neces- 
sity whatever,  of  putting  the  able  man  there.  Brick 
must  lie  on  brick  as  it  may  and  can.  Unable  simula- 
crum of  ability,  quack,  in  a  word,  must  adjust  himself 
with  quack,  in  all  manner  of  administration  of  human 
things — which  accordingly  lie  unadministered,  ferment- 
ing into  unmeasured  masses  of  failure,  of  indigent 
misery  :  in  the  outward,  and  in  the  in  ward  or  spiritual, 
miserable  millions  stretch  out  the  hand  for  their  due 
supply  and  it  is  not  there.  The  "  law  of  gravitation  " 
acts ;  nature's  laws  do  none  of  them  forget  to  act. 
The  miserable  millions  burst  forth  into  sansculottism, 
or  some  other  sort  of  madness  :  bricks  and  bricklayer 
lie  as  a  fatal  chaos ! 

Much  sorry  stuff,  written  some  hundred  years  ago 
or  more,  about  the  "  divine  right  of  kings,"  molders 
unread  now  in  the  public  libraries  of  this  country. 
Far  be  it  from  us  to  disturb  the  calm  process  by  which 


234  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

it  is  disappearing  harmlessly  from  the  earth,  in  those 
repositories  !  At  the  same  time,  not  to  let  the  in> 
mense  rubbish  go  without  leaving  us,  as  it  ought,  some 
soul  of  it  behind — I  will  say  that  it  did  mean  some- 
thing ;  something  true,  which  it  is  important  for  us 
and  all  men  to  keep  in  mind.  To  assert  that  in  what- 
ever man  you  chose  to  lay  hold  of  (by  this  or  the  other 
plan  of  clutching  at  him)  ;  and  clapped  a  round  piece 
of  metal  on  the  head  of  and  called  king — there  straight- 
way came  to  reside  a  divine  virtue,  so  that  he  became 
a  kind  of  god  and  a  divinity  inspired  him  with  faculty 
and  right  to  rule  over  you  to  all  lengths  ;  this — what 
can  we  do  with  this  but  leave  it  to  rot  silently  in  the 
public  libraries  ?  But  I  will  say  withal  and  that  is 
what  these  divine-right  men  meant,  That  in  kings  and 
in  all  human  authorities  and  relations  that  men  god- 
created  can  form  among  each  other,  there  is  verily 
either  a  divine  right  or  else  a  diabolic  wrong  ;  one  or 
the  other  of  these  two !  For  it  is  false  altogether, 
what  the  last  skeptical  century  taught  us,  that  this 
world  is  a  steam-engine.  There  is  a  God  in  this  world  ; 
and  a  God's  sanction,  or  else  the  violation  of  such, 
does  look  out  from  all  ruling  and  obedience,  from  all 
moral  acts  of  men.  There  is  no  act  more  moral  be- 
tween men  than  that  of  rule  and  obedience.  Woe 
to  him  that  claims  obedience  when  it  is  not  due  ;  woe 
to  him  that  refuses  it  when  it  is  !  God's  law  is  in  that, 
I  say,  however  the  parchment-laws  may  run :  there  is 
a  divine  right  or  else  a  diabolic  wrong  at  the  heart  of 
every  claim  that  one  man  makes  upon  another. 

It  can  do  none  of  us  harm  to  reflect  on  this  :  in  all 
the  relations  of  life  it  will  concern  us  ;  in  loyalty  and 
royalty,  the  highest  of  these.  I  esteem  the  modern 
error,  That  all  goes  by  self-interest  and  the  checking 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  235 

and  balancing  of  greedy  knaveries  and  that,  in  short, 
there  is  nothing  divine  whatever  in  the  association  of 
men,  a  still  more  despicable  error,  natural  as  it  is  to  an 
unbeliving  century,  than  that  of  a  "  divine  right "  in 
people  called  kings.  I  say,  find  me  the  true  fanning, 
king,  or  able  man  and  he  has  a  divine  right  over  me. 
That  we  knew  in  some  tolerable  measure  how  to  find 
him  arid  that  all  men  were  ready  to  acknowledge  his 
divine  right  when  found  :  this  is  precisely  the  healing 
which  a  sick  world  is  everywhere,  in  these  ages,  seeking 
after !  The  true  king,  as  guide  of  the  practical,  has 
ever  something  of  the  pontiff  in  him — guide  of  the 
spiritual,  from  which  all  practice  has  its  rise.  This 
too  is  a  true  saying,  That  the  Icing  is  head  of  the  church. 
But  we  will  leave  the  polemic  stuff  of  a  dead  century 
to  lie  quiet  on  its  bookshelves. 

Certainly  it  is  a  fearful  business,  that  of  having  your 
able  man  to  seek  and  not  knowing  in  what  manner  to 
proceed  about  it !  That  is  the  world's  sad  predica- 
ment in  these  times  of  ours.  They  are  times  of  revo- 
lution and  have  long  been.  The  bricklayer  with  his 
bricks,  no  longer  heedful  of  plummet  or  the  law  of 
gravitation,  have  toppled,  tumbled  and  it  all  welters  as 
we  see !  But  the  beginning  of  it  was  not  the  French 
revolution;  that  is  rather  the  end,  we  can  hope.  It 
were  truer  to  say,  the  beginning  was  three  centuries 
farther  back :  in  the  reformation  of  Luther.  That  the 
thing  which  still  called  itself  Christian  church  had  be- 
come a  falsehood  and  brazenly  went  about  pretending 
to  pardon  men's  sins  for  metallic  coined  money  and  to 
do  much  else  which  in  the  everlasting  truth  of  nature 
it  did  not  now  do  :  here  lay  the  vital  malady.  The  in- 
ward being  wrong,  all  outward  went  ever  more  and 


236  LECTURES  oft  HEROES. 

more  wrong.  Belief  died  away ;  all  was  doubt,  dis- 
belief. The  builder  cast  away  his  plummet ;  said  to 
himself,  "  What  is  gravitation?  Brick  lies  on  brick 
there  !  "  Alas,  does  it  not  still  sound  strange  to  many 
of  us,  the  assertion  that  there  is  a  God's-truth  in  the 
business  of  God-created  men  ;  and  all  is  not  a  kind  of 
grimace,  an  "  expediency,"  diplomacy,  one  knows  not 
what ! 

From  that  first  necessary  assertion  of  Luther's,  "You, 
self-styled  papa,  you  are  no  father  in  God  at  all ;  you 
are — a  chimera,  who  I  know  not  how  to  name  in  polite 
language!"  From  that  onward  to  the  shout  which 
rose  round  Camille  Desmoulins  in  the  Palais-Royal, 
"aux  armes  /"  when  the  people  had  burst  up  against  all 
manner  of  chimeras — I  find  a  natural  historical  se- 
quence. That  shout  too,  so  frightful,  half  infernal, 
was  a  great  matter.  Once  more  the  voice  of  awakened 
nations — starting  confusedly,  as  out  of  nightmare,  as 
out  of  death-sleep,  into  some  dim  feeling  that  life  was 
real ;  that  God's  world  was  not  an  expediency  and  di- 
plomacy !  Infernal — yes,  since  they  would  not  have  it 
otherwise.  Infernal,  since  not  celestial  or  terrestrial ! 
Hollowness,  insincerity  has  to  cease ;  sincerity  of  some 
sort  has  to  begin.  Cost  what  it  may,  reigns  of  terror, 
horrors  of  French  revolution  or  what  else,  we  have 
to  return  to  truth.  Here  is  a  truth,  as  I  said:  a 
truth  clad  in  hell-fire,  since  they  would  not  but  have  it 
so! 

A  common  theory  among  considerable  parties  of 
men  in  England  and  elsewhere  used  to  be,  that  the 
French  nation  had,  in  those  days,  as  it  were  gone  mad; 
that  the  French  revolution  was  a  general  act  of  insan- 
ity, a  temporary  conversion  of  France  and  large  sect- 
ions of  the  world  into  a  kind  of  bedlam.  The  event 


TBK  HERO  AS  KTNG.  237 

had  risen  and  raged  ;  but  was  a  madness  and  nonentity 
— gone  now  happily  into  the  region  of  dreams  and  the 
picturesque !  To  such  confortable  philosophers,  the 
three  days  of  July  1830  must  have  been  a  surprising 
phenomenon.  Here  is  the  French  nation  risen  again, 
in  musketry  and  death  struggle,  out  shooting  and  be- 
ing shot,  to  make  that  same  mad  French  revolution 
good  !  The  sons  and  grandsons  of  those  men,  it  would 
seem,  persist  in  the  enterprise  :  they  do  not  disown  it ; 
they  will  have  it  made  good ;  will  have  themselves 
shot,  if  it  be  not  made  good!  To  philosophers  who 
had  made  up  their  life-system  on  that  "madness" 
quietus,  no  phenomenon  could  be  more  alarming.  Poor 
Niebuhr,  they  say,  the  Prussian  professor  and  historian, 
fell  broken-hearted  in  consequence ;  sickened  if  we  can 
believe  it,  and  died  of  the  three  days  !  It  was  surely 
not  a  very  heroic  death — little  better  than  Racine's, 
dying  because  Louis  XIV  looked  sternly  on  him  once. 
The  world  had  stood  some  considerable  shocks,  in  its 
time ;  might  have  been  expected  to  survive  the  three 
days  too,  and  be  found  turning  on  its  axes  after  even 
them !  The  three  days  told  all  mortals  that  the  old 
French  revolution,  mad  as  it  might  look,  was  not  a 
transitory  ebullition  of  bedlam,  but  a  genuine  product 
of  this  earth  where  we  all  live;  that  it  was  verily  a 
fact,  and  that  the  world  in  general  would  do  well  every- 
where to  regard  it  as  such. 

Truly,  without  the  French  revolution,  one  would  not 
know  what  to  make  of  an  age  like  this  at  all.  We  will 
hail  the  French  revolution,  as  shipwrecked  mariners 
might  the  sternest  rock,  in  a  world  otherwise  all  of 
baseless  sea  and  waves.  A  true  apocalypse,  though  a 
terrible  one,  to  this  false  withered  artificial  time  ;  tes- 
tifying once  more  that  nature  is  jy/^ternatural ;  if  not 


mu 

bee 

^wlfl 


238  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

divine,  then  diabolic  ;  that  semblance  is  not  reality  ; 
that  it  has  to  become  reality,  or  the  world  will  take 
fire  under  it  —  burn  it  into  what  it  is,  namely  nothing  I 
Plausibility  has  ended  ;  empty  routine  has  ended  ; 
much  has  ended.  This,  as  with  a  trump  of  doom,  has 
been  proclaimed  to  all  men.  They  are  the  wisest  who 
learn  it  soonest.  Long  confused  generations  be- 
fore it  be  learned  ;  peace  impossible  till  it  be  !  The 
earnest  man,  surrounded  as  ever,  with  a  world  of  in- 
consistencies, can  await  patiently,  patiently  strive  to 
do  his  work,  in  the  midst  of  that.  Sentence  of  death 
is  written  down  in  heaven  against  all  that  ;  sentence  of 
death  is  now  proclaimed  on  the  earth  against  it  :  this 
he  with  his  eyes  may  see.  And  surely,  I  should  say, 
considering  the  other  side  of  the  matter,  what  enor- 
mous difficulties  lie  there,  and  how  fast,  fearful  fast,  in 
all  countries,  the  inexorable  demand  for  solution  of 
them  is  pressing  on  —  he  may  easily  find  other  work  to 
do  than  laboring  in  the  sansculottic  province  at  this 
time  of  day  ! 

To  me,  in  these  circumstances,  that  of  "hero  wor- 
ship "  becomes  a  fact  inexpressibly  precious  ;  the  most 
solacing  fact  one  sees  in  the  world  at  present.  There 
is  an  everlasting  hope  in  it  for  the  management  of  the 
world.  Had  all  traditions,  arrangements,  creeds,  soci- 
eties that  men  ever  insituted,  sunk  away,  this  would 
remain.  The  certainty  of  heroes  being  sent  us  ;  our 
faculty,  our  necessity,  to  reverence  heroes  when 
sent  :  it  shines  like  a  polestar  through  smoke-clouds, 
dust-clouds,  and  all  manner  of  down-rushing  and  con- 
flagration. 

Hero  worship  would  have  sounded  very  strange  to 
those  workers  and  fighters  in  the  French  revolution. 
Not  reverence  for  great  men  ;  not  any  hope  or  belief, 


V. 

THE  HERO  AS  KING.  239 

or  even  wish,  that  great  men  could  again  appear  in 
the  world  !  Nature,  turned  into  a  "  machine,"  was  as 
if  effete  now ;  could  not  any  longer  produce  great  men  : 
I  can  tell  her,  she  may  give  up  the  trade  altogether, 
then  ;  we  cannot  do  without  great  men  !  But  neither 
have  I  any  quarrel  with  that  of  "  liberty  and  equality ; " 
with  the  faith  that,  wise  great  men  being  impossible, 
a  level  immensity  of  foolish  small  men  would  suffice. 
It  was  a  natural  faith  then  and  there.  "  Liberty  and 
equality  ;  no  authority  needed  any  longer.  Hero  wor- 
ship, reverence  for  such  authorities,  has  proved  false,  is 
itself  a  falsehood  ;  no  more  of  it !  "We  have  had  such 
forgeries,  we  will  now  trust  nothing.  So  many  base 
plated  coins  parring  in  the  market,  the  belief  has  now 
become  common  that  no  gold  any  longer  exists — and 
even  that  we  can  do  very  well  without  gold  !  "  I  find 
this,  among  other  things,  in  that  universal  cry  of  liberty 
and  equality  ;  and  find  it  very  natural,  as  matters  then 
stood. 

And  yet  surely  it  is  but  the  transition  from  false  to  • 
true.  Considered  as  the  whole  truth,  it  is  false  alto- 
gether— the  product  of  entire  skeptical  blindness,  as 
yet  only  struggling  to  see.  Hero  worship  exists  for- 
ever and  everywhere:  not  loyalty  alone;  it  extends 
from  divine  adoration  down  to  the  lowest  practical' 
regions  of  life.  "  Bending  before  men,"  if  it  is  not  to  be 
a  mere  empty  grimace,  better  dispensed  with  than  • 
practiced,  is  hero  worship — a  recognition  that  there 
does  dwell  in  that  presence  of  our  brother  something 
divine ;  that  every  created  man,  as  Novalis  said,  is  a 
"  revelation  in  the  flesh."  They  were  poets  too,  that 
devised  all  those  graceful  courtesies  which  make  life 
noble !  Courtesy  is  not  a  falsehood  or  grimace ;  it 
need  not  be  such.  And  loyalty,  religious  worship  it- 
self, are  still  possible^  n^y  still  inevitable. 


240  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

May  we  not  say,  moreover,  while  so  many  of  our 
late  heroes  have  worked  rather  as  revolutionary  men, 
that  nevertheless  every  great  man,  every  genuine  man, 
is  by  the  nature  of  him  a  son  of  order,  not  of  dis- 
order 'I  It  is  a  tragical  position  for  a  true  man  to  work 
in  revolutions.  He  seems  an  anarchist ;  and  indeed  a 
painful  element  of  anarchy  does  encumber  him  at 
every  step — him  to  whose  whole  soul  anarchy  is  hostile, 
hateful.  His  mission  is  order ;  every  man's  is.  He  is 
here  to  make  what  was  disorderly,  chaotic,  into  a 
thing  ruled,  regular.  He  is  the  missionary  of  order. 
Is  not  all  work  of  man  in  this  world  a  making  of 
order  f  The  carpenter  finds  rough  trees ;  shapes  them, 
constrains  them  into  square  fitness,  into  purpose  and 
use.  We  are  all  born  enemies  of  disorder :  it  is  tragi- 
cal for  us  all  to  be  concerned  in  image-breaking  and 
down-pulling ;  for  the  great  man,  more  a  man  than  we, 
it  is  doubly  tragical. 

Thus  too  all  human  things,  maddest  French  sanscu- 
lottisms,  do  and  must  work  toward  order.  I  say,  there 
is  not  a  man  in  them,  raging  in  the  thickest  of  the 
madness,  but  is  impelled  withal,  at  all  moments,  toward 
order.  His  very  life  means  that ;  disorder  is  disso- 
lution, death.  No  chaos  but  it  seeks  a  center  to  re- 
volve round.  While  man  is  man,  some  Cromwell  or 
Napoleon  is  the  necessary  finish  of  a  sansculottism. 
Curious :  in  those  days  when  hero  worship  was  the 
most  incredible  thing  to  every  one,  how  it  does  come 
out  nevertheless  and  assert  itself  practically,  in  a  way 
which  all  have  to  credit.  Divine  right,  take  it  on  the 
great  scale,  is  found  to  mean  divine  might  withal ! 
While  old  false  formulas  are  getting  trampled  every- 
where into  destruction,  new  genuine,  substances  unex- 
pectedly unfold  themselves  indestructible.  In  rebel- 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  241 

lious  ages,  when  kingship  itself  seems  dead  and  abol- 
ished, Cromwell,  Napoleon  step  forth  again  as  kings. 
The  history  of  these  men  is  what  we  have  now  to  look 
at,  as  our  last  phasis  of  heroism.  The  old  ages  are 
brought  back  to  us ;  the  manner  in  which  kings  were 
made  and  kingship  itself  first  took  rise,  is  again  exhib- 
ited in  the  history  of  these  two. 

We  have  had  many  civil  wars  in  England  ;  wars  of 
Red  and  White  Roses,  wars  of  Simon  de  Montfort ;  wars 
enough,  which  are  not  very  memorable.  But  that  war 
of  the  Puritans  has  a  significance  which  belong  to  no 
one  of  the  others.  Trusting  to  your  candor,  which 
will  suggest  on  the  other  side  what  I  have  not  room  to 
say,  I  will  call  it  a  section  once  more  of  that  great 
universal  war  which  alone  makes  up  the  true  history 
of  the  world — the  war  of  belief  against  unbelief!  The 
struggle  of  men  intent  on  the  real  essence  of  things 
against  men  intent  on  the  semblances  and  forms  of 
things.  The  Puritans,  to  many,  seem  mere  savage 
Iconoclasts,  fierce  destroyers  of  forms ;  but  it  were 
more  just  "to  call  them  hearers  of  untrue  forms.  I 
hope  we  know  how  to  respect  Laud  and  his  king  as 
well  as  them.  Poor  Laud  seems  to  me  to  have  been 
weak  and  ill-starred,  not  dishonest;  an  unfortunate 
pedant  rather  then  anything  worse.  His  "dreams" 
and  superstitions,  at  which  they  laugh  so,  have  an 
affectionate,  lovable  kind  of  character.  He  is  like  a 
college  tutor,  whose  whole  world  is  forms,  college  rules; 
whose  notion  is  that  these  are  the  life  and  safety  of 
the  world.  He  is  placed  suddenly,  with  that  unalter- 
able luckless  notion  of  his,  at  the  head  not  of  a  college 
but  of  a  nation,  to  regulate  the  most  complex  deep- 
reaching  interests  of  men.  He  thinks  they  ought  to 


242  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

go  by  the  old  descent  regulations ;  nay  that  their  sal- 
vation will  lie  in  extending  and  improving  these.  Like 
a  weak  man,  he  drives  with  spasmodic  vehemence 
toward  his  purpose ;  cramps  himself  to  it,  heeding  no 
voice  of  prudence,  no  cry  of  pity  :  he  will  have  his 
college  rules  obeyed  by  his  collegians  ;  that  first ;  and 
till  that,  nothing.  He  is  an  ill-starred  pedant,  as  I 
said.  He  would  have  it  the  world  was  a  college  of 
that  kind,  and  the  world  was  not  that.  Alas,  was 
not  his  doom  stern  enough  ?  Whatever  wrongs 
he  did,  were  they  not  all  frightfully  avenged  on 
him? 

It  is  meritorious  to  insist  on  forms ;  religion  and  all 
else  naturally  clothes  itself  in  forms.  Everywhere  the 
formed  world  is  the  only  habitable  one.  The  naked 
formlessness  of  Puritanism  is  not  the  thing  I  praise  in 
the  Puritans  ;  it  is  the  thing  I  pity — praising  only  the 
spirit  which  had  rendered  that  inevitable !  All  sub- 
stances clothe  themselves  in  forms :  but  there  are  suit- 
able true  forms,  and  then  there  are  untrue  unsuitable. 
As  the  briefest  definition,  one  might  say,  forms  which 
grow  round  in  substance,  if  we  rightly  understand  that, 
will  correspond  to  the  real  nature  and  purport  of  it, 
will  be  true,  good ;  forms  which  are  consciously  put 
round  a  substance,  bad.  I  invite  you  to  reflect  on  this. 
It  distinguishes  true  from  false  in  ceremonial  form, 
earnest  solemnity  from  empty  pageant,  in  all  human 
things. 

There  must  be  a  veracity,  a  natural  spontaneity  in 
forms.  In  the  commonest  meeting  of  men,  a  person 
making,  what  we  call,  "set  speeches,"  is  not  he  in, 
offense?  In  the  mere  drawing-room,  whatsoever 
courtesies  you  see  to  be  grimaces,  prompted  by  no 
spontaneous  reality  within?  are  a  thing  you  wish  to 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  243 

get  away  from.  But  suppose  now  it  were  some  matter 
of  vital  concernment,  some  transcendent  matter  (as 
divine  worship  is),  about  which  your  whole  soul,  struck 
dumb  with  its  excess  of  feeling,  knew  not  how  ioform 
itself  into  utterence  at  all,  and  preferred  formless  si- 
lence to  any  utterance  there  possible — what  should  we 
say  of  a  man  coming  forward  to  represent  or  utter  it 
for  you  in  the  way  of  upholsterer-mummery  ?  Such 
a  man — let  him  depart  swiftly,  if  he  love  himself ! 
You  have  lost  your  only  son ;  are  mute,  struck  down, 
•without  even  tears :  an  importunate  man  importunately 
offers  to  celebrate  funeral  games  for  him  in  the  manner 
of  the  Greeks !  Such  mummery  is  not  only  to  be  ac- 
cepted— it  is  hateful,  unendurable.  It  is  what  the  old 
prophets  called  "  idolatry,"  worshiping  of  hollow 
shows;  what  all  earnest  men  do  and  will  reject.  We 
can  partly  understand  what  those  poor  Puritans  meant. 
Laud  dedicating  that  St.  Catherine  Creed's  church,  in 
the  manner  we  have  it  described  ;  with  his  multiplied 
ceremonial  bowings,  gesticulations,  exclamations: 
surely  it  is  rather  the  rigorous  formal  pedant,  intent  on 
his  "college  rules,"  than  the  earnest  prophet,  intent  on 
the  essence  of  the  matter ! 

Puritanism  found  such  forms  insupportable ;  tramp- 
led on  such  forms — we  have  to  excuse  it  for  saying, 
No  forms  at  all  rather  than  such  !  It  stood  preaching 
in  its  bare  pulpit,  with  nothing  but  the  Bible  in  its 
hand.  Nay,  a  man  preaching  from  his  earnest  soul 
into  the  earnest  souls  of  men :  is  not  this  virtually  the 
essence  of  all  churches  whatsoever  ?  The  nakedest,  / 
savagest  reality,  I  say,  is  preferable  to  any  semblance, 
however  dignified.  Besides,  it  will  clothe  itself 
with  due  semblance  by  and  by,  if  it  be  real.  No 
fear  of  that;  actually  no  fear  at  all,  Criy§n  the. 


244  LECTURES  ON  1IKROES. 

living  man,  there  will  be  found  clothes  for  him;  he 
A\ill  find  himself  clothes.  But  the  suit  of  clothes 
pretending  that  it  is  both  clothes  and  man!  We 
"cannot  fight  the  French"  by  three  hundred  thousand 
red  uniforms ;  there  must  be  men  in  the  inside  of 
them  !  Semblance,  I  assert,  must  actually  not  divorce 
itself  from  reality.  If  semblance  do — why  then  there 
must  be  men  found  to  rebel  against  semblance,  for  it 
has  become  a  lie !  These  two  antagonisms  at  war 
here,  in  the  case  of  Laud  and  the  Puritans,  are  as  old 
nearly  as  the  world.  They  went  to  fierce  battle  over 
England  in  that  age ;  and  fought  out  their  confused 
controversy  to  a  certain  length,  with  many  results  for 
all  of  us. 

In  the  age  which  directly  followed  that  of  the  Puri- 
tans, their  cause  or  themselves  were  little  likely  to 
have  justice  done  them.  Charles  II  and  his  Rochesters 
were  not  the  kind  of  men  you  would  set  to  judge  what 
the  worth  or  meaning  of  such  men  might  have  been. 
That  there  could  be  any  faith  or  truth  in  the  life  of  a 
man,  was  what  these  poor  Rochesters  and  the  age 
they  ushered  in,  had  forgotten.  Puritanism  was  hun^ 
on  gibbets— like  the  bones  of  the  leading  Puritans. 
Its  work  nevertheless  went  on  accomplishing  itself. 
All  true  work  of  a  man,  hang  the  author  of  it  on  what 
gibbet  you  like,  must  and  will  accomplish  itself.  We 
have  our  habeas  corpus,  our  free  representation  of  the 
people  ;  acknowledgement,  wide  as  the  world,  that  all 
men  are,  or  else  must,  shall  and  will  become,  what  we 
call  free  men — men  with  their  life  grounded  on  reality 
and  justice,  not  on  tradition,  which  has  become  unjust 
and  a  chimera !  This  in  part,  and  much  besides  this? 
was  the  work  of  the  Puritans. 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  245 

And  indeed,  as  these  things  became  gradually  mani- 
fest, the  character  of  the  Puritans  began  to  clear  itself. 
Their  memories  were,  one  after  another,  taken  down 
from  the  gibbet ;  nay  a  certain  portion  of  them  are 
now,  in  these  days,  as  good  as  canonized.  Eliot,  Hamp- 
den,  Pym,  nay  Ludlow,  Hutchmson,  Yane  himself,  are 
admitted  to  be  a  kind  of  heroes;  political  conscript 
fathers,  to  whom  in  no  small  degree  we  owe  what 
makes  us  a  free  England :  it  would  not  be  safe  for 
anybody  to  designate  these  men  as  wicked  now.  Few 
Puritans  of  note  but  find  their  apologists  somewhere 
and  have  a  certain  reverence  paid  them  by  earnest 
men.  One  Puritan,  I  think,  and  almost  he  alone,  our 
poor  Cromwell,  seems  to  hang  yet  on  the  gibbet  and 
find  no  hearty  apologist  anywhere.  Him  neither 
saint  nor  sinner  will  acquit  of  great  wickedness.  A 
man  of  ability,  infinite  talent,  courage  and  so  forth  : 
but  he  betrayed  the  cause.  Selfish  ambition,  dishonesty, 
duplicity ;  a  fierce,  coarse,  hypocritical  ttirtufe  ;  turn- 
ing all  that  noble  struggle  for  constitutional  liberty 
into  a  sorry  farce  played  for  his  own  benefit :  this  and 
worse  is  the  character  they  give  of  Cromwell.  And 
then  there  come  contrasts  with  Washington  and  others; 
above  all,  with  these  noble  Pyms  and  Hampdens, 
whose  noble  work  he  stole  for  himself  and  ruined  into 
a  futility  and  deformity. 

This  view  of  Cromwell  seems  to  me  the  not  unnat- 
ural product  of  a  century  like  the  eighteenth.  As  we 
said  of  the  valet,  so  of  the  skeptic :  he  does  not  know 
a  hero  when  he  sees  him  !  The  valet  expected  purple 
mantles,  gilt  scepters,  body-guards  and  flourishes  of 
trumpets :  the  skeptic  of  the  eighteenth  century  looks 
for  regulated  respectable  formulas,  "  principles,"  or 
else  he  may  call  them ;  a  style  of  speech  ancj 


246  LECTURES  ON  11KROES. 

conduct  which  has  got  to  seem  "  respectable,"  which 
can  plead  for  itself  in  a  handsome  articulate  manner 
and  gain  the  suffrages  of  an  enlightened  skeptical 
eighteenth  century  !  It  is,  at  bottom,  the  same  thing 
that  both  the  valet  and  he  expect ;  the  garnitures  of 
some  acknowledged  royalty,  which  then  they  will  ac- 
knowledge !  The  king  coming  to  them  in  the  rugged 
'zmformulistic  state  shall  be  no  king. 

For  my  own  share,  far  be  it  from  me  to  say  or  in- 
sinuate a  word  of  disparagement  against  such  characters 
as  Hampden,  Eliot,  Pym;  whom  I  believe  to  have 
been  right  worthy  and  useful  men.  I  have  read  dili- 
gently what  books  and  documents  about  them  I  could 
come  at — with  the  honestest  wish  to  admire,  to  love 
and  worship  them  like  heroes  ;  but  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
if  the  real  truth  must  be  told,  with  very  indifferent 
success !  At  bottom,  I  found  that  it  would  not  do. 
They  are  very  noble  men,  these ;  step  along  in  their 
stately  way,  with  their  measured  euphemisms,  philos- 
ophies, parliamentary  eloquences,  ship-moneys,  mon- 
archies of  man  ;  a  most  constitutional,  unblamable, 
dignified  set  of  men.  But  the  heart  remains  cold  be- 
fore them ;  the  fancy  alone  endeavors  to  get  up  some 
worship  of  them.  What  man's  heart  does,  in  reality, 
break  forth  into  any  fire  of  brotherly  love  for  these 
men  ?  They  are  become  dreadfully  dull  men  !  One 
breaks  down  often  enough  in  the  constitutional 
eloquence  of  the  admirable  Pym,  with  his  "  seventhly 
and  lastly."  You  find  that  it  may  be  the  admirablest 
thing  in  the  world,  but  that  it  is  heavy — heavy  as  lead, 
barren  as  brick-clay  :  that,  in  a  word,  for  you  there  is 
little  or  nothing  now  surviving  there  !  One  leaves  all 
these  nobilities  standing  in  their  nitches  of  honor  :  the 
rugged  outcast  Cromwell,  he  is  the  man  of  them  all  in 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  217 

whom  one  still  finds  human  stuff.  The  great  savago 
Baresark:  he  could  write  no  euphemistic  "Monarchy 
of  Man;"  did  not  speak,  did  not  work  with  glib  regu- 
larity ;  had  no  straight  story  to  tell  for  himself  any- 
where. But  he  stood  bare,  not  cased  in  euphemistic 
coat  of  mail ;  he  grappled  like  a  giant,  face  to  face, 
heart  to  heart,  with  the  naked  truth  of  things  !  That, 
after  all,  is  the  sort  of  man  for  one.  I  plead  guilty  to 
valuing  such  a  man  beyond  all  other  sorts  of  men. 
Smooth-shaven  respectabilities  not  a  few  one  finds,  that 
are  not  good  for  much.  Small  thanks  to  a  man  for 
keeping  his  hands  clean,  who  would  not  touch  the  work 
but  with  gloves  on ! 

Neither,  on  the  whole,  does  this  constitutional  toler- 
ance of  the  eighteenth  century  for  the  other  happier 
Puritans  seem  to  be  a  very  great  matter.  One  might 
say,  it  is  but  a  piece  of  formulism  and  skepticism,  like 
the  rest.  They  tell  us,  It  was  a  sorrowful  thing  to 
consider  that  the  foundation  of  our  English  liberties 
should  have  been  laid  by  "  superstition."  These  Puri- 
tans came  forward  with  Calvanistic  incredible  creeds, 
anti-Laudisms,  Westminister  confessions ;  deman  ding, 
chiefly  of  all,  that  they  should  have  liberty  to  worship 
in  their  own  way.  Liberty  to  tax  themselves :  that 
was  the  thing  they  should  have  demanded !  It  was 
superstition,  fanaticism,  disgraceful  ignorance  of  con- 
stitutional philosophy  to  insist  on  the  other  thing ! 
Liberty  to  tax  oneself  ?  Not  to  pay  out  money  from 
your  pocket  except  on  reason  shown  ?  No  century,  I 
think,  but  a  rather  barren  one  would  have  fixed  on 
that  as  the  first  right  of  man  !  I  should  say,  on  the 
contrary,  a  just  man  will  generally  have  better  cause 
than  money  in  what  shape  soever,  before  deciding  to 
revolt  against  his  government.  Ours  is  a  most  confused 


248  LECTURES  ON  UEROES. 

world ;  in  which  a  good  man  will  be  thankful  to  see 
any  kind  of  government  maintain  itself  in  a  not  insup- 
portable manner  :  and  here  in  England,  to  this  hour, 
if  he  is  not  ready  to  pay  a  great  many  taxes  which  he 
can  see  very  small  reason  in,  it  will  not  go  well  with 
him,  I  think !  He  must  try  some  other  climate  than 
this.  Taxgatherer  ?  Money  ?  He  will  say  :  "  Take 
my  money,  since  you  can,  and  it  is  so  desirable  to  you ; 
take  it — and  take  yourself  away  with  it :  and  leave  me 
alone  to  my  work  here  /am  still  here;  can  still  work, 
after  all  the  money  you  have  taken  from  me !"  But 
if  they  come  to  him  and  say,  "  Acknowledge  a  lie ; 
pretend  to  say  you  are  worshiping  God,  when  you 
are  not  doing  it :  believe  not  the  thing  that  you  find 
true,  but  the  thing  that  I  find,  or  pretend  to  find  true !" 
He  will  answer :  "  No  ;  by  God's  help,  no !  You  may 
take  my  purse  ;  but  I  cannot  have  my  moral  self  an- 
nihilated. The  purse  is  any  highwayman's  who  might 
meet  me  with  a  loaded  pistol :  but  the  self  is  mine  and 
God  my  maker's ;  it  is  not  yours ;  and  I  will  resist 
you  to  the  death,  and  revolt  against  you,  and  on  the 
whole,  front  all  manner  of  extremities,  accusations  and 
confusions,  in  defense  of  that !" 

Really,  it  seems  to  me  the  one  reason  which  could 
justify  revolting,  this  of  the  Puritans.  It  has  been  the 
soul  of  all  just  revolts  among  men.  Not  hunger  alone 
produced  even  the  French  revolution  ;  no,  but  the 
feeling  of  the  insupportable  all-pervading  falsehood 
which  had  now  embodied  itself  in  hunger,  in  universal 
material  scarcity  and  .nonentity,  and  thereby  become 
indisputably  false  in  the  eyes  of  all !  We  will  leave 
the  eighteenth  century  with  its  "  liberty  to  tax  itself." 
"We  will  not  astonish  ourselves  that  the  meaning  of 
such  men  as  the  Puritans  remained  dim  to  it,  To  me.rx 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  249 

who  believe  in  no  reality  at  all,  how  shall  a  real  human 
soul,  the  intensest  of  all  realities,  as  it  were  the  voice 
of  this  world's  Maker  still  speaking  to  us — be  intelligi- 
ble !  What  it  cannot  reduce  into  constitutional  doc- 
trines relative  to  "  taxing,"  or  other  the  like  material 
interest,  gross,  palpable  to  the  sense,  such  a  century 
will  needs  reject  as  an  amorphous  heap  of  rubbish. 
Hampdens,  Pyms  and  shipmoney  will  be  the  theme 
of  much  constitutional  eloquence,  striving  to  be 
fervid — which  will  glitter,  if  not  as  fire  does,  then 
as  ice  does :  and  the  irreducible  Cromwell  will  remain 
a  chaotic  mass  of  "  madness,"  "  hypocrisy,"  and  much 
else. 

From  of  old,  I  will  confess,  this  theory  of  Crom- 
well's falsity  has  been  incredible  to  me.  Nay  I  cannot 
believe  the  like,  of  any  great  man  whatever.  Multi- 
tudes of  great  men  figure  in  history  as  false,  selfish 
men;  but  if  we  will  consider  it,  they  are  \>w.t  figures 
for  us,  unintelligible  shadows  we  do  not  see  into  them 
as  men  that  could  have  existed  at  all.  A  superficial 
unbelieving  generation  only,  with  no  eye  but  for  the 
surfaces  and  semblances  of  things,  could  form  such 
notions  of  great  men.  Can  a  great  soul  be  possible 
without  a  conscience  in  it,  the  essence  of  all  real  souls, 
great  or  small  ?  No,  we  cannot  figure  Cromwell  as  a 
falsity  and  fatuity ;  the  longer  I  study  him  and  his 
career,  I  believe  this  the  less.  Why  should  we  ?  There 
is  no  evidence  of  it.  Is  it  not  strange  that,  after  all 
the  mountains  of  calumny  this  man  has  been  subject 
to,  after  being  represented  as  the  very  prince  of  liars, 
who  never,  or  hardly  ever,  spoke  truth,  but  always 
some  cunning  counterfeit  of  truth,  there  should  not 
yet  have  been  one  falsehood  brought  clearly  home  to 


250  LECTURES  ON  HKROES. 

him?  A  prince  of  liars  and  no  lie  spoken  by  him. 
Not  one  that  I  could  yet  get  sight  of.  It  is  like  Po- 
cocke  asking  Grotius  :  "  Where  is  your  proof  ot  Ma- 
homet's pigeon  ? "  No  proof !  Let  us  leave  all  these 
calumnious  chimeras,  as  chimeras  ought  to  be  left. 
They  are  not  portraits  of  the  man  ;  they  are  distracted 
phantasms  of  him,  the  joint  product  of  hatred  and 
darkness. 

Looking  at  the  man's  life  with  our  own  eyes,  it 
seems  to  me,  a  very  different  hypothesis  suggests  it- 
self. What  little  we  know  of  his  earlier  obscure  years, 
distorted  as  it  has  come  down  to  us,  does  it  not  all  be- 
token an  earnest,  affectionate,  sincere  kind  of  man  ? 
His  nervous  melancholic  temperament  indicates  rather 
a  seriousness  too  deep  for  him.  Of  those  stories  of 
"  specters  ; "  of  the  white  specter  in  broad  daylight, 
predicting  that  he  should  be  king  of  England,  we  are 
not  bound  to  believe  much — probably  no  more  than  of 
the  other  black  specter,  or  devil  in  person,  to  whom 
the  officer  saw  him  sell  himself  before  Worcester  fight ! 
But  the  mournful,  over-sensitive,  hypochondriac  humor 
of  Oliver,  in  his  young  years,  is  otherwise  indisputably 
known.  The  Huntingdon  physician  told  Sir  Philip 
Warwick  himself,  he  had  often  been  sent  for  at  mid- 
night; Mr.  Cromwell  was  full  of  hypochondria, 
thought  himself  near  dying  and  "had  fancies  about 
the  town-cross."  These  things  are  significant.  Such 
an  excitable  deep-feeling  nature,  in  that  rugged  stub- 
born strength  of  his,  is  not  the  symptom  of  falsehood  ; 
it  is  the  symptom  and  promise  of  quite  other  than 
falsehood ! 

The  young  Oliver  is  sent  to  study  law ;  falls,  or  is 
said  to  have  fallen,  for  a  little  period,  into  some  of  the 
dissipations  of  youth ;  but  if  so,  speedily  repents, 


THE  BEHO  AS  KINO.  251 

abandons  all  this :  not  much  above  twenty,  he  is  mar- 
ried, settled  as  an  altogether  grave  and  quiet  man. 
"  He  pays  back  what  money  he  had  won  at  gambling," 
says  the  story — he  does  not  think  any  gain  of  that 
kind  could  be  really  his.  It  is  very  interesting,  very 
natural,  this  "  conversion,"  as  they  well  name  it ;  this 
awakening  of  a  great  true  soul  from  the  worldly  slough, 
to  see  into  the  awful  truth  of  things — to  see  that  time 
and  its  shows  all  rested  on  eternity  and  this  poor 
earth  of  ours  was  the  threshold  either  of  heaven  or  of 
hell !  Oliver's  life  at  St.  Ives  and  Ely,  as  a  sober  in- 
dustrious farmer,  is  it  not  altogether  as  that  of  a  true 
and  devout  man  ?  He  has  renounced  the  world  and  its 
ways  ;  its  prizes  are  not  the  thing  that  can  enrich  him. 
He  tills  the  earth  ;  he  reads  his  Bible  ;  daily  assembles 
his  servants  round  him  to  worship  God.  He  comforts 
persecuted  ministers,  is  fond  of  preachers ;  nay  can 
himself  preach — exhorts  his  neighbors  to  be  wise, 
to  redeem  the  time.  In  all  this  what  "  hypocrisy," 
"  ambition,"  "  cant,"  or  other  falsity  ?  The  man's 
hopes,  I  do  believe,  were  fixed  on  the  other  higher 
world ;  his  aim  to  get  well  thither,  by  walking  well 
through  his  humble  course  in  this  world.  He  courts  no 
notice :  what  could  notice  here  do  for  him  ?  "  Ever  in  his 
great  task-master's  eye." 

It  is  striking,  too,  how  he  comes  out  once  into  public 
view  ;  he,  since  no  other  is  willing  to  come  :  in  resist- 
ance to  a  public  grievance.  I  mean,  in  that  matter  of 
the  Bedford  Fens.  No  one  else  will  go  to  law  with 
authority ;  therefore  he  will.  That  matter  once  set- 
tled, he  returns  back  into  obscurity,  to  his  Bible  and 
his  plow.  "  Gain  influence  ? "  His  influence  is  the 
most  legitimate  ;  derived  from  personal  knowledge  of 
him,  as  a  just,  religious,  reasonable  and  determined 


252  LBUTURttB  ON  HKROK8. 

man.  In  this  way  he  has  lived  till  past  forty ;  old  age  is 
now  in  view  of  him  and  the  earnest  portal  of  death  and 
eternity  ;  it  was  at  this  point  that  he  suddenly  became 
"ambitious!"  I  do  not  interpret  his  parliamentary 
mission  in  that  way  ! 

His  successes  in  parliament,  his  successes  through 
the  war,  are  honest  successes  of  a  brave  man ;  who  has 
more  resolution  in  the  heart  of  him,  more  light  in  the 
head  of  him  than  other  men.  His  prayers  to  God ; 
his  spoken  thanks  to  the  god  of  victory,  who  had  pre- 
served him  safe,  and  carried  him  forward  so  far, 
through  the  furious  clash  of  a  world  all  set  in  conflict, 
through  desperate-looking  envelopments  at  Dunbar; 
through  the  death-hail  of  so  many  battles  ;  mercy  after 
mercy  ;  to  the  "  crowning  mercy  "  of  Worcester  fight: 
all  this  is  good  and  genuine  for  a  deep-hearted  Calvinistic 
Cromwell.  Only  to  vain  unbelieving  cavaliers,  wor- 
shiping not  God  but  their  own  "love  locks,"  frivolities 
and  formalities,  living  quite  apart  from  contemplations 
of  God,  living  without  God  in  the  world,  need  it  seem 
hypocritical. 

Nor  will  his  participation  in  the  king's  death  involve 
him  in  condemnation  with  us.  It  is  a  stern  business 
killing  of  a  king  !  But  if  you  once  go  to  war  with  him, 
it  lies  there  ;  this  and  all  else  lies  there.  Once  at  war, 
you  have  made  wager  of  battle  with  him :  it  is  he  to 
die,  or  else  you.  Reconciliation  is  problematic  ;  may 
be  possible,  or,  far  more  likely,  is  impossible.  It  is 
now  pretty  generally  admitted  that  the  parliament, 
having  vanquished  Charles  I,  had  no  way  of  making 
any  tenable  arrangement  with  him.  The  large  Pres- 
byterian party,  apprehensive  now  of  the  independents, 
were  most  anxious  to  do  so ;  anxious  indeed  as  for  their 
own  existence;  but  it  could  not  be  The  unhappy 


THK  HERO  AS  KING.  253 

Charles,  in  those  final  Hampden  court  negotiations, 
shows  himself  as  a  man  fatally  incapable  of  being  dealt 
with.  A  man  who,  once  for  all,  could  not  and  would 
not  understand — whose  thought  did  not  in  any  meas- 
ure represent  to  him  the  real  fact  of  the  matter  ;  nay 
worse,  whose  word  did  not  at  all  represent  his  thought. 
"We  may  say  this  of  him  without  cruelty,  with  deep 
pity  rather  :  but  it  is  true  and  undeniable.  Forsaken 
there  of  all  but  the  name  of  kingship,  he  still,  finding 
himself  treated  with  outward  respect  as  a  king,  fancied 
that  he  might  play  off  party  against  party,  and  smug- 
gle himself  into  his  old  power  by  deceiving  both.  Alas, 
they  both  discovered  that  he  was  deceiving  them.  A 
man  whose  word  will  not  inform  you  at  all  what  he 
means  or  will  do,  is  not  a  man  you  can  bargain  with. 
You  must  get  out  of  that  man's  way,  or  put  him  out 
of  yours!  The  Presbyterians,  in  their  despair,  were 
still  for  believing  Charles,  though  found  false,  unbeliev- 
able again  and  again.  Not  so  Cromwell :  "  For  all  our 
fighting,"  says  he,  "we  are  to  have  a  little  bit  of  paper?" 
No! 

In  fact,  everywhere  we  have  to  note  the  decisive 
practical  eye  of  this  man  ;  how  he  drives  toward  the 
pratical  and  practicable :  has  a  genuine  insight  into 
what  is  fact.  Such  an  intellect,  I  maintain,  does  not 
belong  to  a  false  man  :  the  false  man  sees  false  shows, 
plausibilities,  expediences :  the  true  man  is  needed  to 
discern  even  practical  truth.  Cromwell's  advice  about 
the  parliament's  army,  early  in  the  contest,  how  they 
were  to  dismiss  their  city  tapsters,  flimsy  riotous  per- 
sons, and  choose  substantial  yeomen,  whose  heart  was 
in  the  work,  to  be  soldiers  for  them  :  this  is  advice  by 
a  man  who  saw.  Fact  answers,  if  you  see  into  fact! 
Cromwell's  ironsides  were  the  embodiment  of  this 


254  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

insight  of  his ;  men  fearing  God ;  and  without 
any  other  fear.  No  more  conclusively  genuine  set  of 
fighters  ever  trod  the  soil  of  England,  or  of  any  other 
land. 

Neither  will  we  blame  greatly  that  word  of  Crom- 
well's to  them ;  which  was  so  blamed :  "  If  the  king 
should  meet  me  in  battle,  I  would  kill  the  king."  Why 
not  ?  These  words  were  spoken  to  men  who  stood  as 
before  a  Higher  than  kings.  They  had  set  more  than 
their  own  lives  on  the  cast.  The  parliament  may  call 
it,  in  official  language,  a  fighting  "for  the  king ; "  but 
we,  for  our  share,  cannot  understand  that.  To  us  it 
is  no  dilettante  work,  no  sleek  offlciality :  it  is  sheer 
rough  death  and  earnest.  They  have  brought  it  to 
the  calling  forth  of  war;  horrid  internecine  fight,  man 
grappling  with  man  in  fire-eyed  rage — the  infernal 
element  in  man  called  forth,  to  try  it  by  that !  Do 
that  therefore  ;  since  that  is  the  thing  to  be  done.  The 
successes  of  Cromwell  seem  to  me  a  very  natural  thing! 
Since  he  was  not  shot  in  battle,  they  were  an  inevit- 
able thing.  That  such  a  man,  with  the  eye  to  see, 
with  the  heart  to  dare,  should  advance,  from  post  to 
post,  from  victory  to  victory,  till  the  Huntingdon 
farmer  became,  by  whatever  name  you  might  call 
him,  the  acknowledged  strongest  man  in  England, 
virtually  the  king  of  England,  requires  no  magic  to 
explain  it ! 

Truly  it  is  a  sad  thing  for  a  people,  as  for  a  man,  to 
fall  into  skepticism,  into  dilettantism,  insincerity  ;  not 
to  know  a  sincerity  when  they  see  it.  For  this  world 
and  for  all  worlds,  what  curse  is  so  fatal  ?  The  heart 
lying  dead,  the  eye  cannot  see.  What  intellect  remains 
is  merely  the  vulpine  intellect.  That  a  true  king  be 
sent  them  is  of  small  use ;  they  do  not  know  him  when 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  255 

Sent.  They  say  scornfully,  "  Is  this  your  king  ?  "  The 
hero  wastes  his  heroic  faculty  in  bootless  contradiction 
from  the  unworthy  ;  and  can  accomplish  little.  For 
himself  he  does  accomplish  a  heroic  life,  which  is  much, 
which  is  all ;  but  for  the  world  he  accomplishes  com- 
paratively nothing.  The  wild  rude  sincerity,  direct 
from  nature,  is  not  glib  in  answering  from  the  witness- 
box  :  in  your  sm&ll-debt  pie-powder  court,  he  is  scouted 
as  a  counterfeit.  The  vulpine  intellect"  detects"  him. 
For  being  a  man  worth  any  thousand  men,  the  re 
sponse  your  Knox,  your  Cromwell  gets,  is  an  argu- 
ment for  two  centuries  whether  he  was  a  man  at 
all.  God's  greatest  gift  to  this  earth  is  sneeringly 
flung  away.  The  miraculous  talisman  is  a  paltry 
plated  coin,  not  fit  to  pass  in  the  shops  as  a  common 
guinea. 

Lamentable  this !  I  say,  this  must  be  remedied. 
Till  this  be  remedied  in  some  measure,  there  is  noth- 
ing remedied.  "  Detect  quacks  ?  "  Yes  do,  for  heaven's 
sake  ;  but  know  withal  the  men  that  are  to  be  trusted ! 
Till  we  know  that,  what  is  all  our  knowledge  ;  how 
shall  we  even  so  much  as  "  detect  ? "  For  the  vulpine 
sharpness,  which  considers  itself  to  be  knowledge  and 
"  detects  "  in  that  fashion,  is  far  mistaken.  Dupes  in- 
deed are  many  :  but,  of  all  dupes,  there  is  none  so  fa- 
tally situated  as  he  who  lives  in  undue  terror  of  being 
duped.  The  world  does  exist ;  the  world  has  truth  in 
it,  or  it  would  not  exist !  First  recognize  what  is  true, 
we  shall  then  discern  what  is  false ;  and  properly  never 
till  then. 

"  Know  the  men  that  are  to  be  trusted  :  "  alas,  this 
is  yet,  in  these  days,  very  far  from  us.  The  sincere 
alone  can  recognize  sincerity.  Not  a  hero  only  is 
needed,  but  a  world  fit  for  him  ;  a  world  not  of  vale* 


2-56  LKCTURK8  ON  HKROK8. 

— the  hero  comes  almost  in  vain  to  it  otherwise!  Yes, 
it  is  far  from  us :  but  it  must  come ;  thank  God,  it  is 
visibly  coming.  Till  it  do  come,  what  have  we?  Bal- 
lot-boxes, suffrages,  French  revolutions — if  we  are  as 
valets  and  do  not  know  the  hero  when  we  see  him, 
what  good  are  all  these  ?  A  heroic  Cromwell  comes 
and  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  he  cannot  have  a 
vote  from  us.  Why,  the  insincere,  unbelieving  world 
is  the  natural  property  of  the  quack  and  of  the  father 
of  quacks  and  quackeries!  Misery,  confusion,  unve- 
racity  are  alone  possible  there.  By  ballot-boxes  we 
alter  thejlgure  of  our  quack;  but  the  substance  of  him 
continues.  The  valet-world  has  to  be  governed  by  the 
sham-hero,  by  the  king  merely  dressed  in  king-gear. 
It  is  his ;  he  is  its  !  In  brief,  one  of  two  things :  We 
shall  either  learn  to  know  a  hero,  a  true  governor  and 
captain,  somewhat  better,  when  we  see  him  ;  or  else 
go  on  to  be  forever  governed  by  the  unheroic — had 
we  ballot-boxes  clattering  at  every  street-corner,  there 
were  no  remedy  in  these. 

Poor  Cromwell — great  Cromwell !  The  inarticulate 
prophet ;  prophet  who  could  not  speak.  Rude,  con- 
fused, struggling  to  utter  himself,  with  his  savage 
depth,  with  his  wild  sincerity  ;  and  he  looked  so  strange, 
among  the  elegant  euphemisms,  dainty  little  Falklands, 
didactic  Chillingworths,  diplomatic  Clarendons!  Con- 
sider him.  An  outer  hull  of  chaotic  confusion,  visions 
of  the  devil,  nervous  dreams,  almost  semi-madness; 
and  yet  such  a  clear  determinate  man's  energy  work- 
ing in  the  heart  of  that.  A  kind  of  chaotic  man.  The 
ray  as  of  pure  starlight  and  fire,  working  in  such  an 
element  of  boundless  hypochondria,  -unformed  black  of 
darkness!  And  yet  withal  this  hypochondria,  what 
was  it  but  the  very  greatness  of  the  man  ?  The  depth 
and  tenderness  of  his  wild  affections  :  the  quantity  of 


TEE  HERO  AS  KING.  257 

sympathy  he  had  with  things — the  quantity  of  insight 
he  would  yet  get  into  the  heart  of  things,  the  mastery 
he  would  yet  get  over  things  :  this  was  his  hypochon- 
dria. The  man's  misery,  as  man's  misery  always  does, 
came  of  his  greatness.  Samuel  Johnson  too  is  that 
kind  of  man.  Sorrow-stricken,  half-distracted ;  the  wide 
element  of  mournful  Hack  enveloping  him — wide  as 
the  world.  It  is  the  character  of  a  prophetic  man ; 
a  man  with  his  whole  soul  seeing  and  struggling  to 
see. 

On  this  ground,  too,  I  explain  to  myself  Cromwell's 
reputed  confusion  of  speech.  To  himself  the  internal 
meaning  was  sun-clear ;  but  the  material  with  which 
he  was  to  clothe  it  in  utterance  was  not  there.  He 
had  lived  silent ;  a  great  unnamed  sea  of  thought 
round  him  all  his  days  ;  and  in  his  way  of  life  little 
call  to  attempt  naming  or  uttering  that.  With  his 
sharp  power  of  vision,  resolute  power  of  action,  I  doubt 
not  he  could  have  learned  to  write  books  withal,  and 
speak  fluently  enough — he  did  harder  things  than 
writing  of  books.  This  kind  of  man  is  precisely  he 
who  is  fit  for  doing  manfully  all  things  you  will  set 
him  on  doing.  Intellect  is  not  speaking  and  logicising; 
it  is  seeming  and  ascertaining.  Virtue,  vir-tus,  manhood, 
Am?hood,  is  not  fair-spoken  immaculate  regularity  ;  it 
is  first  of  all,  what  the  Germans  well  name  it,  tugend 
(taugend,  dow-'mg  or  dough-tmess),  courage  and  the 
faculty  to  do.  This  basis  of  the  matter  Cromwell  had 
in  him. 

One  understands  moreover  how,  though  he  could  not 
speak  in  parliament,  he  might  preach,  rhapsodic  preach- 
ing ;  above  all,  how  he  might  be  great  in  extempore 
prayer.  These  are  the  free  outpouring  utterances  of 
what  was  in  the  heart :  method  is  not  required  in  them; 


258  LECTURES  ON  HEROES.       . 

warmth,  depth,  sincerity  are  all  that  is  required. 
Cromwell's  habit  of  prayer  is  a  notable  feature  of  him. 
All  his  great  enterprises  were  commenced  with  prayer. 
In  dark  inextricable-looking  difficulties,  his  officers  and 
he  used  to  assemble,  and  pray  alternately,  for  hours, 
for  days,  till  some  definite  resolution  rose  among  them, 
.some  "  door  of  hope,"  as  they  would  name  it,  disclosed 
itself.  Consider  that.  In  tears,  in  fervent  prayers, 
and  cries  to  the  great  God,  to  have  pity  on  them,  to 
make  His  light  shine  before  them.  They,  armed  sol- 
diers of  Christ,  as  they  felt  themselves  to  be  ;  a  little 
band  of  Christian  brothers,  who  had  drawn  the  sword 
against  a  great  black  devoring  world  not  Christian,  but 
mammonish,  devilish — they  cry  to  God  in  their  straits, 
in  their  extreme  need,  not  to  forsake  the  cause  that 
was  His.  The  light  which  now  rose  upon  them — how 
could  a  human  soul,  by  any  means  at  all,  get  better 
light  ?  Was  not  the  purpose  so  formed  like  to  be  pre- 
cisely the  best,  wisest,  the  one  to  be  followed  without 
hesitation  any  more  ?  To  them  it  was  as  the  shining 
of  heaven's  own  splendor  in  the  waste-howling  dark- 
ness ;  the  pillar  of  fire  by  night,  that  was  to  guide 
them  on  their  desolate  perilous  way.  Was  it  not  such  ? 
Can  a  man's  soul,  to  this  hour,  get  guidance  by  any 
other  method  than  intrinsically  by  that  same — devout 
prostration  of  the  earnest  struggling  soul  before  the 
Highest,  the  Giver  of  all  light;  be  such  prayer  a 
spoken,  articulate,  or  be  it  a  voiceless,  inarticulate  one  ? 
There  is  no  other  method.  "  Hypocrisy  ?"  One  be- 
gins to  be  weary  of  all  that.  They  who  call  it  so,  have 
no  right  to  speak  on  such  matters.  They  never  formed 
a  purpose,  what  one  can  call  a  purpose.  They  went 
about  balancing  expediencies,  plausibilities;  gathering 
votes,  advices  j  they  never  were  alone  with  the  truth 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  259 

of  a  thing  at  all.  Cromwell's  prayers  were  likely  to  bo 
"  eloquent,'5  and  much  more  than  that.  His  was  tho 
heart  of  a  man  who  could  pray. 

But  indeed  his  actual  speeches,  I  apprehend,  were 
not  nearly  so  ineloquent,  incondite,  as  they  look.  We 
find  he  was,  what  all  speakers  aim  to  be,  an  impressive 
speaker,  even  in  parliament ;  one  who,  from  the  first, 
had  weight.  With  that  rude  passionate  voice  of  his, 
he  was  always  understood  to  mean  something,  and  men 
wished  to  know  what.  He  disregarded  eloquence,  nay 
despised  and  disliked  it ;  spoke  always  without  premedi- 
tation of  the  words  he  was  to  use.  The  reporters,  too, 
in  those  days  seem  to  have  been  singularly  candid ; 
and  to  have  given  the  printer  precisely  what  they 
found  on  their  own  note-paper.  And  withal,  what  a 
strange  proof  is  it  of  Cromwell's  being  the  premedita- 
tive  ever-calculating  hypocrite,  acting  a  play  before 
the  world,  that  to  the  last  he  took  no  more  charge  of 
his  speeches !  How  came  he  not  to  study  his  words  a 
little,  before  flinging  them  out  to  the  public  ?  If  the 
words  were  true  words,  they  could  be  left  to  shift  for 
themselves. 

But  with  regard  to  Cromwell's  "lying,"  we  will 
make  one  remark.  This,  I  suppose,  or  something  like 
this,  to  have  been  the  nature  of  it.  All  parties  found 
themselves  deceived  in  him ;  each  party  understood 
him  to  be  meaning  Ms,  heard  him  even  say  so,  and 
behold  he  turns  out  to  have  been  meaning  that  !  He 
was,  cry  they,  the  chief  of  liars.  But  now,  intrinsically, 
is  not  all  this  the  inevitable  fortune,  not  of  a  false  man, 
in  such  times,  but  simpty  of  a  superior  man  ?  Such  $ 
man  must  have  reticences  in  him.  If  he  walks  wearing 
his  heart  upon  his  sleeve  for  daws  to  pick  at,  his  jour- 
ney will  not  extend  far !  There  is  no  use  for  any  man's 


200  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

taking  up  his  abode  in  a  house  built  of  glass.  A  man 
always  is  to  be  himself  the  judge  how  much  of  his  mind 
he  will  show  to  other  men  ;  even  to  those  he  would 
have  work  along  with  him.  There  are  impertinent  in- 
quiries made  :  your  rule  is,  to  leave  the  inquirer  unin- 
formed on  that  matter;  not,  if  you  can  help  it, 
misinformed,  but  precisely  as  dark  as  he  was ! 
This,  could  one  hit  the  right  phrase  of  response,  is 
what  the  wise  and  faithful  man  would  aim  to  answer 
in  such  a  case. 

Cromwell,  no  doubt  of  it,  spoke  often  in  the  dialect  of 
small  subaltern  parties;  uttered  to  them  &part  of  his 
mind.  Each  little  party  thought  him  all  its  own. 
Hence  their  rage,  one  and  all,  to  find  him  not  of  their 
party,  but  of  his  own  party  !  Was  it  his  blame  ?  At 
all  seasons  of  his  history  he  must  have  felt,  among  such 
people,  how,  if  he  explained  to  them  the  deeper  insight 
he  had,  they  must  either  have  shuddered  aghast  at  it, 
or  believing  it,  their  own  little  compact  hypothesis 
must  have  gone  wholly  to  wreck.  They  could  not  have 
worked  in  his  province  anymore;  nay  perhaps  they 
could  not  now  have  worked  in  their  own  province.  It 
is  the  inevitable  position  of  a  great  man  among  small 
men.  Small  men,  most  active,  useful,  are  to  be  seen 
everywhere,  whose  whole  activity  depends  on  some 
conviction  which  to  you  is  palpably  a  limited  one  ;  im- 
perfect, what  we  call  an  error.  But  would  it  be  a 
kindness  always,  is  it  a  duty  always  or  often,  to  disturb 
llx-iii  in  that?  Many  a  man,  doing  loud  work  in  the 
world,  st;mds  only  on  some  thin  traditionality,  con- 
ventionality; to  him  indubitable,  to  you  incredible: 
break  that  beneath  him,  he  sinks  to  endless  depths ! 
"  I  might  have  my  hand  full  of  truth,"  said  Fontenelle, 
"and  open  only  my  little  linger." 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  261 

And  if  this  be  the  fact  even  in  matters  of  doctrine, 
how  much  more  in  all  departments  of  practice  !  He 
that  cannot  withal  keep  his  mind  to  himself  cannot 
practice  any  considerable  thing  whatever.  And  we  call 
it  "  dissimulation,"  all  this  ?  What  would  you  think  of 
calling  the  general  of  an  army  a  dissembler  because  he 
did  not  tell  every  corporal  and  private  soldier,  who 
pleased  to  put  the  question,  what  his  thoughts  were 
about  everything?  Cromwell,  I  should  rather  say, 
managed  all  this  in  a  manner  we  must  admire  for  its 
perfection.  An  endless  vortex  of  such  questioning 
"  corporals  "  rolled  confusedly  round  him  through  his 
whole  course;  whom  he  did  answer.  It  must  have 
been  as  a  great  true-seeing  man  that  he  managed  this 
too.  Not  one  proved  falsehood,  as  I  said ;  not  one ! 
Of  what  man  that  ever  wound  himself  through  such  a 
coil  of  things  will  you  say  so  much  ? 

But  in  fact  there  are  two  errors,  widely  prevalent, 
which  pervert  to  the  very  basis  our  judgments  formed 
about  such  men  as  Cromwell ;  about  their  "ambition," 
"  falsity,"  and  suchlike.  The  first  is  what  I  might  call 
substituting  the  goal  of  their  career  for  the  course  and 
starting-point  of  it.  The  vulgar  historian  of  a  Crom- 
well fancies  that  he  had  determined  on  being  protector 
of  England,  at  the  time  when  he  was  plowing  the 
marsh  lands  of  Cambridgeshire.  His  career  lay  all 
mapped  out :  a  programme  of  the  whole  drama ;  which 
he  then  step  by  step  dramatically  unfolded,  with  all 
manner  of  cunning,  deceptive  dramaturgy,  as  he  went 
on — the  hollow,  scheming  T^o^r??,  or  play-actor,  that 
he  was  ?  This  is  a  radical  perversion  ;  all  but  universal 
in  such  cases.  And  think  for  an  instant  how  different 
the  fact  is !  How  much  does  one  of  us  foresee  of  his 


262  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

own  life  ?  Short  way  ahead  of  us  it  is  all  dim  ;  an  un- 
wound  skein  of  possibilities,  of  apprehensions,  attempt- 
abilities,  vague  looming  hopes.  This  Cromwell  bad  not 
his  life  lying  all  in  that  fashion  of  programme,  which 
he  needed  then,  with  that  unfathomable  cunning  of  his, 
only  to  enact  dramatically,  scene  after  scene !  Not  so. 
We  see  it  so ;  but  to  him  it  was  in  no  measure  so. 
"What  absurdities  would  fall  away  of  themselves,  were 
this  one  undeniable  fact  kept  honestly  in  view  by 
history !  Historians  indeed  will  tell  you  that  they  do 
keep  it  in  view — but  look  whether  such  is  practically 
the  fact !  Vulgar  history,  as  in  this  Cromwell's  case, 
omits  it  altogether ;  even  the  best  kinds  of  history  only 
remember  it  now  and  then.  To  remember  it  duly  with 
rigorous  perfection,  as  in  the  fact  it  stood  requires  in- 
deed a  rare  faculty ;  rare,  nay  impossible.  A  very 
Shakespeare  for  faculty ;  or  more  than  Shakespeare ; 
who  could  enact  a  brother  man's  biography,  see  with 
the  brother  man's  eyes  at  all  points  of  his  course  what 
things  lie  saw  ;  in  short,  know  his  course  and  him,  as 
few  "  historians  "  are  like  to  do.  Half  or  more  of  all 
the  thick-plied  perversions  which  distort  our  image  of 
Cromwell,  will  disappear,  if  we  honestly  so  much 
as  try  to  represent  them  so ;  in  sequence,  as  they 
were;  not  in  the  lump,  as  they  are  thrown  down 
before  us. 

But  a  second  error,  which  I  think  the  generality 
commit,  refers  to  this  same  "  ambition "  itself.  We 
exagerate  the  ambition  of  great  men ;  we  mistake 
what  the  nature  of  it  is.  Great  men  are  not  ambitious 
in  that  sense ;  he  is  a  small  poor  man  that  is  ambitious 
so.  Examine  the  man  who  lives  in  misery  because  he 
does  not  shine  above  other  men  ;  who  goes  about  pro- 
ducing himself,  pruriently  anxious  about  his  gifts  an*} 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  263 

claims  ;  struggling  to  force  everybody,  as  it  were  beg- 
ging everybody  for  God's  sake,  to  acknowledge  him  a 
great  man,  and  set  him  over  the  heads  of  men  !  Such 
a  creature  is  among  the  wretched est  sights  seen  under 
this  sun.  A  great  man?  A  poor  morbid  prurient 
empty  man  ;  fitter  for  the  ward  of  a  hospital,  than  for 
a  throne  among  men.  I  advise  you  to  keep  out  of  his 
way.  He  cannot  walk  on  quiet  paths  ;  unless  you  will 
look  at  him,  wonder  at  him,  write  paragraphs  about 
him,  he  cannot  live.  It  is  the  emptiness  of  the  man, 
not  his  greatness.  Because  there  is  nothing  in  himself, 
he  hungers  and  thirsts  that  you  would  find  something 
in  him.  In  good  truth,  I  believe  no  great  man,  not  so 
much  as  a  genuine  man  who  had  health  and  real  sub- 
stance in  him  of  whatever  magnitude,  was  ever  much 
tormented  in  this  way. 

Your  Cromwell,  what  good  could  it  do  him  to  be 
"  noticed  "  by  noisy  crowds  of  people  ?  God  his  Maker 
already  noticed  him.  He,  Cromwell,  was  already 
there ;  no  notice  would  make  him  other  than  he 
already  was.  Till  his  hair  was  grown  gray ;  and  life 
from  the  downhill  slope  was  all  seen  to  be  limited,  not 
infinite  but  finite,  and  all  a  measurable  matter  how  it 
went — he  had  been  content  to  plow  the  ground,  and 
read  his  Bible.  He  in  his  old  days  could  not  support 
it  any  longer,  without  selling  himself  to  falsehood,  that 
he  might  ride  in  gilt  carriages  to  Whitehall,  and  have 
clerks  with  bundles  of  papers  haunting  him,  "  Decide 
this,  decide  that,"  which  in  utmost  sorrow  of  heart  no 
man  can  perfectly  decide  !  What  could  gilt  carriages 
do  for  this  man  ?  From  of  old,  was  there  not  in  his 
life  a  weight  of  meaning,  a  terror  and  a  splendor  as  of 
heaven  itself?  His  existence  there  as  man  set  him  be- 
yond the  need  of  gilding.  Death,  judgment  a.nd  eter 


264  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

nity  :  these  already  lay  as  the  background  of  whatso- 
ever he  thought  or  did.  All  his  life  lay  begirt  as  in  a 
sea  of  nameless  thoughts,  which  no  speech  of  a  mortal 
could  name.  God's  word,  as  the  Puritan  prophets  of 
that  time  had  read  it :  this  was  great,  and  ail  else  was 
little  to  him.  To  call  such  a  man  "ambitious,"  to 
figure  him  as  the  prurient  wind-bag  described  above, 
seems  to  me  the  poorest  solecism.  Such  a  man  will 
say :  "  Keep  your  gilt  carriages  and  huzzahing  mobs, 
keep  your  red-tape  clerks,  your  influentialities,  your 
important  businesses.  Leave  me  alone,  leave  me  alone ; 
there  is  too  much  of  life  in  me  already  !  "  Old  Samuel 
Johnson,  the  greatest  soul  in  England  in  his  day,  was 
not  ambitious.  "  Corsica  Boswell "  flaunted  at 
public  shows  with  printed  ribbons  round  his  hat ; 
but  the  great  old  Samuel  stayed  at  home.  The 
world -wide  soul  wrapped  up  in  its  thoughts,  in  its 
sorrows— what  could  paradings  and  ribbons  in  the  hat, 
do  for  it? 

Ah  yes,  1  will  say  again  :  the  great  silent  men  ! 
Looking  round  on  the  noisy  inanity  of  the  world,  words 
with  little  meaning,  actions  with  little  worth,  one  loves 
to  reflect  on  the  great  empire  of  silence.  The  noble 
silent  men,  scattered  here  and  there,  each  in  his  de- 
partment; silently  thinking,  silently  working;  whom 
no  morning  newspaper  makes  mention  of !  They  are 
the  salt  of  the  earth.  A  country  that  has  none  or  few 
of  these  is  in  a  bad  way.  Like  a  forest  which  had  no 
root*;  which  had  all  turned  into  leaves  and  boughs — 
which  must  soon  wither  and  be  no. forest.  Woe  for 
us  if  we  had  nothing  but  what  we  can  show,  or  speak. 
Silence,  the  great  empire  of  silence  :  higher  than  the 
stars  ;  deeper  than  the  kingdoms  of  death  !  It  alone 
is  great ;  all  else  is  small.  I  hope  we  English  will  long 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  265 

maintain  our  grand  talent  pour  le  silence.  Let  others 
that  cannot  do  without  standing  on  barrel-heads,  to 
spout,  and  be  seen  of  all  the  market-place,  cultivate 
speech  exclusively — become  a  most  green  forest  with- 
out roots !  Solomon  says,  There  is  a  time  to  speak ; 
but  also  a  time  to  keep'silence.  Of  some  great  silent 
Samuel,  not  urged  to  writing,  as  old  Samuel  Johnson 
says  he  was,  by  want  of  money,  and  nothing  other,  one 
might  ask,  "  Why  do  not  you  too  get  up  and  speak  ; 
promulgate  your  system,  found  your  sect  ? "  "  Truly," 
he  will  answer,  "  I  am  continent  of  my  thought  hither- 
to ;  happily  I  have  yet  had  the  ability  to  keep  it  in 
me,  no  compulsion  strong  enough  to  speak  it.  My 
"  system  "  is  not  for  promulgation  first  of  all ;  it  is  for 
serving  myself  to  live  by.  That  is  the  great  purpose 
of  it  to  me.  And  then  the  "  honor  ?"  Alas,  yes — but 
as  Cato  said  of  the  statue :  so  many  statues  in  that 
forum  of  yours,  may  it  not  be  better  if  they  ask,  Where 
is  Cato's  statue  ?  " 

But  now,  by  the  way  of  counterpoise  to  this  of 
silence,  let  me  say  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  am- 
bition; one  wholly  blamable,  the  other  laudable  and 
inevitable.  Nature  has  provided  that  the  great  silent 
Samuel  shall  not  be  silent  too  long.  The  selfish  wish 
to  shine  over  others,  let  it  be  accounted  altogether 
poor  and  miserable.  "  Seekest  thou  great  things,  seek 
them  not : "  this  is  most  true.  And  yet,  I  say,  there 
is  an  irrepressible  tendency  in  every  man  to  develop 
himself  according  to  the  magnitude  which  nature  has 
made  him  of ;  to  speak  out,  to  act  out,  what  nature  has 
laid  in  him.  This  is  proper,  fit,  inevitable ;  nay  it  is  a 
duty  and  even  the  summary  of  duties  for  a  man.  The 
meaning  of  life  here  on  earth  might  be  defined  as  con- 
sisting in  this  :  To  unfold  your  self,  to  work  what 


266  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

thing  you  have  the  faculty  for.  It  is  a  necessity  for 
the  human  being,  the  first  law  of  our  existence.  Cole- 
ridge beautifully  remarks  that  the  infant  learns  to 
speak  by  this  necessity  it  feels.  We  will  say  therefore : 
"  To  decide  about  ambition,  whether  it  is  bad  or  not, 
you  have  two  things  to  take  into  view.  Not  the  cov- 
eting of  the  place  alone,  but  the  fitness  of  the  man  for 
the  place  withal : "  that  is  the  question.  Perhaps  the 
place  was  his  ;  perhaps  he  had  a  natural  right  and  even 
obligation,  to  seek  the  place !  Mirabeau's  ambition  to 
be  prime  minister,  how  shall  we  blame  it,  if  he  were 
"  the  only  man  in  France  that  could  have  done  any 
good  there  ? "  Hopef  uler  perhaps  had  he  not  so  clearly 
felt  how  much  good  he  could  do  !  But  a  poor  Necker, 
who  could  do  no  good  and  had  even  felt  that  he  could 
do  none,  yet  sitting  broken-hearted  because  they  had 
flung  him  out  and  he  was  now  quit  of  it,  well  might 
Gibbon  mourn  over  him.  Nature,  I  say,  has  provided 
amply  that  the  silent  great  man  shall  strive  to  speak 
withal ;  too  amply,  rather  ! 

Fancy,  for  example,  you  had  revealed  to  the  brave 
old  Samuel  Johnson,  in  his  shrouded-up  existence,  that 
it  was  possible  for  him  to  do  priceless  divine  work  for 
his  country  and  the  whole  world.  That  the  perfect 
heavenly  law  might  be  made  law  on  this  earth ;  that 
the  prayer  he  prayed  daily,  "  Thy  kingdom  come,"  was 
at  length  to  be  fulfilled  !  If  you  had  convinced  his 
judgement  of  this ;  that  it  was  possible,  practicable  ; 
that  he  the  mournful  silent  Samuel  was  called  to  take 
a  part  in  it !  Would  not  the  whole  soul  of  the  man 
have  flamed  up  into  a  divine  clearness,  into  noble  utter- 
ance and  determination  to  act ;  casting  all  sorrows  and 
misgivings  under  his  feet,  counting  all  affliction  and 
contradiction  small — the  whole  dark  element  of  his  ex- 


THE  HERO  AS  KIN&.  267 

istence  blazing  into  articulate  radiance  of  light  and 
lightning  ?  It  were  a  true  ambition  this  !  And  think 
now  how  it  actually  was  with  Cromwell.  From  of  old, 
the  sufferings  of  God's  church,  true  zealous  preachers 
of  the  truth  flung  into  dungeons,  whipped,  set  on  pil- 
lories, their  ears  cropped  off,  God's  gospel  cause  trod- 
den under  foot  of  the  unworthy  :  all  this  had  lain 
heavy  on  his  soul.  Long  years  he  had  looked  upon  it, 
in  silence,  in  prayer ;  seeing  no  remedy  on  earth ; 
trusting  well  that  a  remedy  in  heaven's  goodness  would 
come — that  such  a  course  was  false,  unjust  and  could 
not  last  forever.  And  now  behold  the  dawn  of  it; 
after  twelve  years  silent  waiting,  all  England  stirs  it- 
self ;  there  is  to  be  once  more  a  parliament,  the  right 
will  get  a  voice  for  itself :  inexpressible  well-grounded 
hope  has  come  again  into  the  earth.  Was  not  such  a 
parliament  worth  being  a  member  of?  Cromwell 
threw  down  his  plows  and  hastened  thither. 

He  spoke  there — rugged  bursts  of  earnestness,  of  a 
self-seen  truth,  where  we  get  a  glimpse  of  them.  He 
worked  there;  he  fought  and  strove,  like  a  strong  true 
giant  of  a  man,  through  cannon-tumult  and  all  else — 
on  and  on,  till  the  cause  triumphed,  its  once  so  formid- 
able enemies  all  swept  from  before  it  and  the  dawn  of 
hope  had  become  clear  light  of  victory  and  certainty. 
That  he  stood  there  as  the  strongest  soul  of  England, 
the  undisputed  hero  of  all  England — what  of  this  ?  It 
was  possible  that  the  law  of  Christ's  gospel  could  now 
establish  itself  in  the  world !  The  theocracy  which 
John  Knox  in  his  pulpit  might  dream  of  as  a  "  devout 
imagination,"  this  practical  man,  experienced  in  the 
whole  chaos  of  most  rough  practice,  dared  to  consider 
as  capable  of  being  realized.  Those  that  were  highest 
in  Christ's  church,  the  devoutest  wisest  men,  were  to 


268  LECTURES  ON 

rule  the  land  :  in  some  considerable  degree,  it  might  be 
so  and  should  be  so.  Was  it  not  true,  God's  truth  ? 
And  if  true,  was  it  not  then  the  very  thing  to  do  ?  The 
strongest  practical  intellect  in  England  dared  to  an- 
swer, Yes  !  This  I  call  a  noble  true  purpose ;  is  it  not, 
in  its  own  dialect,  the  noblest  that  could  enter  into  the 
heart  of  statesman  or  man  ?  For  a  Knox  to  take  it  up 
was  something ;  but  for  a  Cromwell,  with  his  great 
sound  sense  and  experience  of  what  our  world  was — 
history,  I  think,  shows  it  only  this  once  in  such  a  de- 
gree. I  account  it  the  culminating  point  of  Protest- 
antism;  the  most  heroic  phasis  that  "faith  in  the 
Bible  "  was  appointed  to  exhibit  here  below.  Fancy  it : 
that  it  were  made  manifest  to  one  of  us,  how  we  could 
make  the  right  supremely  victorious  over  wrong  and 
all  that  we  had  longed  and  prayed  for,  as  the  high- 
est good  to  England  and  all  lands,  an  attainable 
fact ! 

Well,  I  must  say,  the  vulpine  intellect,  with  its 
knowingness,  its  alertness  and  expertness  in  "detect- 
ing hypocrites,"  seems  to  me  a  rather  sorry  business. 
We  have  had  but  one  such  statesman  in  England ;  one 
man,  that  I  can  get  sight  of,  who  ever  had  in  the  heart 
of  him  any  such  purpose  at  all.  One  man,  in  the 
course  of  fifteen  hundred  years  ;  and  this  was  his  wel- 
come. He  had  adherents  by  the  hundred  or  the  ten  ; 
opponents  by  the  million.  Had  England  rallied  all 
round  him — why,  then,  England  might  have  been  a 
Christian  land !  As  it  is,  vulpine  knowingness  sits  yet 
at  its  hopeless  problem,  "  Given  a  world  of  knaves,  to 
educe  an  honesty  from  their  united  action  ; "  how 
cumbrous  a  problem,  you  may  see  in  chancery  law- 
courts  and  some  other  places!  Till  at  length,  by 
heaven's  just  anger,  but  also  by  heaven's  great  grace., 


THE  BEttO  AS  KING.  260 

the  matter  begins  to  stagnate ;  and  this  problem  is  be- 
coming to  all  men  a  palpably  hopeless  one* 

But  with  regard  to  Cromwell  and  his  purposes : 
Hume  and  a  multitude  following  him,  come  upon  me 
here  with  an  admission  that  Cromwell  was  sincere  at 
first ;  a  sincere  "  fanatic  "  at  first,  but  gradually  became 
a  "  hypocrite  "  as  things  opened  round  him.  This  of 
the  fanatic  hypocrite  is  Hume's  theory  of  it;  extens- 
ively applied  since — to  Mahomet  and  many  others. 
Think  of  it  seriously,  you  will  find  something  in  it ; 
not  much,  not  all,  very  far  from  all.  Sincere  hero 
hearts  do  not  sink  in  this  miserable  manner.  The  sun 
flings  forth  impurities,  gets  balefully  incrusted  with 
spots ;  but  it  does  not  quench  itself  and  become  no  sun 
at  all,  but  a  mass  of  darkness !  I  will  venture  to  say 
that  such  never  befell  a  great  deep  Cromwell ;  I  think, 
never.  Nature's  own  lion-hearted  son  ;  Antaeus-like, 
his  strengh  is  got  by  touching  the  earth,  his  mother ; 
lift  him  up  from  the  earth,  lift  him  up  into  hypocrisy, 
inanity,  his  strength  is  gone.  "We  will  not  assert  that 
Cromwell  was  an  immaculate  man  ;  that  he  fell  into  no 
faults,  no  insincerities  among  the  rest.  He  was  no 
dilettante  professor  of  "  perfections,"  "  immaculate 
conducts."  He  was  a  rugged  Orson,  rending  his  rough 
way  through  actual  true  ivork — doubtless  with  many  a 
fall  therein.  Insincerities,  faults,  very  many  faults 
daily  and  hourly :  it  was  too  well  known  to  him  ; 
known  to  God  and  him  !  The  sun  was  dimmed  many 
a  time ;  but  the  sun  had  not  himself  grown  a  dimness. 
Cromwell's  last  words,  as  he  lay  waiting  for  death,  are 
those  of  a  Christian  heroic  man.  Broken  prayers  to 
God,  that  He  would  judge  him  and  this  cause,  He  since 
man  could  not,  in  justice  yet  in  pity.  They  are  most 


270  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

touching  words.  He  breathed  out  his  wild  great  soul, 
its  toils  and  sins  all  ended  now,  into  the  presence  of  his 
Maker,  in  this  manner. 

I,  for  one,  will  not  call  the  man  a  hypocrite !  Hypo- 
crite, mummer,  the  life  of  him  a  mere  theatricality ; 
empty  barren  quack,  hungry  for  the  shouts  of  mobs  ? 
The  man  had  made  obscurity  do  very  well  for  him  till 
his  head  was  gray  ;  and  now  he  was,  there  as  he  stood 
recognized  unblamed,  the  virtual  king  of  England. 
Cannot  a  man  do  without  king's  coaches  and  cloaks  ? 
Is  it  such  a  blessedness  to  have  clerks  forever  pestering 
you  with  bundles  of  papers  in  red  tape?  A  simple 
Diocletian  prefers  planting  of  cabbages ;  a  George 
Washington,  no  very  immeasurable  man,  does  the  like. 
One  would  say,  it  is  what  any  genuine  man  could  do  ; 
and  would  do.  The  instant  his  real  work  were  out  in 
the  matter  of  kingship — away  with  it ! 

Let  us  remark;  meanwhile,  how  indispensable  every- 
where a  king  is,  in  all  movements  of  men.  It  is  strik- 
ingly shown,  in  this  very  war,  what  becomes  of  men 
when  they  cannot  find  a  chief  man  and  their  enemies 
can.  The  Scotch  nation  was  all  but  unanimous  in 
Puritanism ;  zealous  and  of  one  mind  about  it,  as  in 
this  English  end  of  the  island  was  always  far  from  be- 
ing the  case.  But  there  was  no  great  Cromwell  among 
them ;  poor  tremulous,  hesitating,  diplomatic  Argyles 
and  suchlike  ;  none  of  them  had  a  heart  true  enough 
for  the  truth,  or  durst  commit  himself  to  the  truth. 
They  had  no  leader ;  and  the  scattered  cavalier  party 
in  that  country  had  one  :  Montrose,  the  noblest  of  all 
the  cavaliers  ;  an  accomplished,  gallant-hearted,  splen- 
did man  ;  what  one  may  call  the  hero  cavalier.  Well, 
look  at  it ;  on  the  one  hand  subjects  without  a  king ; 
on  the  other  a  king  without  subjects  !  The  subjects  / 


THE  HERO  AS  RING*  271 

without  king  can  do  nothing  ;  the  subjectless  king  can/ 
do  something.  This  Montrose,  with  a  handful  of  Irish 
or  Highland  savages,  few  of  them  so  much  as  guns  in 
their  hands,  dashes  at  the  drilled  Puritan  armies  like  a 
wild  whirlwind ;  sweeps  them,  time  after  time,  some 
live  times  over,  from  the  field  before  him.  He  was  at 
one  period,  for  a  short  while,  master  of  all  Scotland. 
One  man  ;  but  he  was  a  man  :  a  million  zealous  men, 
but  without  the  one ;  they  against  him  were  powerless ! 
Perhaps  of  all  the  persons  in  that  Puritan  struggle, 
from  first  to  last,  the  single  indispensable  one  was 
verily  Cromwell.  To  see  and  dare,  and  decide;  to 
be  a  fixed  pillar  in  the  welter  of  uncertainty — 
a  king  among  them,  whether  they  call  him  so  or 
not. 

Precisely  here,  however,  lies  the  rub  for  Cromwell. 
His  other  procedings  have  all  found  advocates,  and 
stand  generally  justified ;  but  this  dismissal  of  the 
rump  parliament  and  the  assumption  of  the  protector- 
ship, is  what  no  one  can  pardon  him.-  He  had  fairly 
grown  to  be  king  in  England ;  chief  man  of  the 
victorious  party  in  England ;  but  it  seems  he  could 
not  do  without  the  king's  cloak,  and  sold  himself  to 
perdition  in  order  to  get  it.  Let  us  see  a  little  how 
this  was. 

England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  all  lying  now  subdued 
at  the  feet  of  the  Puritan  parliament,  the  pratical  ques- 
tion arose,  what  was  to  be  done  with  it  ?  How  will 
you  govern  these  nations,  which  providence  in  a  won- 
drous way  has  given  up  to  your  disposal  ?  Clearly 
those  hundred  surviving  members  of  the  long  parlia- 
ment, who  sit  there  as  supreme  authority,  cannot  con- 
tinue forever  to  sit.  What  is  to  be  done  ?  It  was  a 


272  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

question  which  theoretical  constitution-builders  may 
find  easy  to  answer;  but  to  Cromwell,  looking  there 
into  the  real  practical  facts  of  it,  there  could  be  none 
more  complicated.  He  asked  of  the  parliament,  what 
it  was  they  would  decide  upon  '(  It  was  for  the  parlia- 
ment to  say.  Yet  the  soldiers  too,  however  contrary 
to  formula,  they  who  had  purchased  this  victory  with 
their  blood,  it  seemed  to  them  that  they  also  should 
have  something  to  say  in  it !  We  will  not  "  For  all 
our  fighting  have  nothing  but  a  little  piece  of  paper." 
We  understand  that  the  law  of  God's  gospel,  to  which 
He  through  us  has  given  the  victory,  shall  establish 
itself,  or  try  to  establish  itself,  in  this  land ! 

For  three  years,  Cromwell  says,  this  question  had 
been  sounded  in  the  ears  of  the  parliament.  They 
could  make  no  answer ;  nothing  but  talk,  talk.  Per- 
haps it  lies  in  the  nature  of  parliamentary  bodies ; 
perhaps  no  parliament  could  in  such  case  make  any 
answer  but  even  that  of  talk,  talk  !  Nevertheless  the 
question  must  and  shall  be  answered.  You  sixty  men 
there,  becoming  fast  odious,  even  despicable,  to  the 
whole  nation,  whom  the  nation  already  calls  rump 
parliament,  you  cannot  continue  to  sit  there:  who  or 
what  then  is  to  follow  ?  "  Free  parliament,"  right  of 
election,  constitutional  formulas  of  one  sort  or  the 
other — the  thing  is  a  hungry  fact  coming  on  us,  which 
we  must  answer  or  be  devoured  by  it !  And  who  are 
you  that  prate  of  constitutional  formulas,  rights  of 
parliament?  You  have  had  to  kill  your  king,  to  make 
pride's  purges,  to  expel  and  banish  by  the  law  of  the 
stronger  whosoever  would  not  let  your  cause 
prosper:  there  are  but  fifty  or  three-score  of  you  left 
there,  debating  in  these  days.  Tell  us  what  we  shall 
do ;  not  in  the  way  of  formula,  but  of  practicable  fact ! 


THE  HERO  AS  KING.  273 

How  they  did  finally  answer,  remains  obscure  to 
this  day.  The  diligent  Godwin  himself  admits  that  he 
cannot  make  it  out.  The  likeliest  is,  that  this  poor 
parliament  still  would  not,  and  indeed  could  not  dis- 
solve and  disperse ;  that  when  it  came  to  the  point  of 
actually  dispersing,  they  again  for  the  tenth  or  twen- 
tieth time,  adjourned  it — and  Cromwell's  patience 
failed  him.  But  we  will  take  the  favorablest  hy- 
pothesis ever  started  for  the  parliament ;  the  favor- 
ablest,  though  I  believe  it  is  not  the  true  one,  but  too 
favorable. 

According  to  this  version :  at  the  uttermost  crisis, 
when  Cromwell  and  his  officers  were  met  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  fifty  or  sixty  rump  members  on  the 
other,  it  was  suddenly  told  Cromwell  that  the  rump  in 
its  despair  was  answering  in  a  very  singular  way  ; 
that  in  their  splenetic  envious  despair,  to  keep  out  the 
army  at  least,  these  men  were  hurrying  through  the 
house  a  kind  of  reform  bill — parliament  to  be  chosen 
by  the  whole  of  England ;  equable  electoral  division 
into  districts ;  free  suffrage  and  the  rest  of  it !  A  very 
questionable,  or  indeed  for  them  an  unquestionable 
thing.  Reform  bill,  free  suffrage  of  Englishmen  ? 
Why,  the  royalists  themselves,  silenced  indeed  but  not 
exterminated,  perhaps  outnumber  us ;  the  great  numer- 
ical majority  of  England  was  always  indifferent  to  our 
cause,  merely  looked  at  it  and  submitted  to  it.  It  is  in 
weight  and  force,  not  by  counting  of  heads,  that  we 
are  the  majority  !  And  now  with  your  formulas  and 
reform  bills,  the  whole  matter,  sorely  won  by  our 
swords,  shall  again  launch  itself  to  sea ;  become  a  mere 
hope  and  likelihood,  small  even  as  a  likelihood  ?  And 
it  is  not  a  likelihood  ;  it  is  a  certainty,  which  we  have 
won,  by  God's  strength  and  our  own  right  hands  and 
<Jo  now  hold  here.  Cromwell  walked  down  to  these 


274  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

refractory  members ;  interrupted  them  in  that  rapid 
speed  of  their  reform  bill — ordered  them  to  begone  and 
talk  there  no  more.  Can  we  not  forgive  him  ?  Can 
\ve  not  understand  him  ?  John  Milton,  who  looked  on 
it  all  near  at  hand,  could  applaud  him.  The  reality 
had  swept  the  formulas  away  before  it.  I  fancy,  most 
men  who  were  realities  in  England  might  see  into  the 
necessity  of  that. 

The  strong  daring  man,  therefore,  has  set  all  man- 
ner of  formulas  and  logical  superficialities  against  him ; 
has  dared  appeal  to  the  genuine  fact  of  this  England, 
"Whether  it  will  support  him  or  not  ?  It  is  curious  to 
see  how  he  struggles  to  govern  in  some  constitutional 
way  ;  find  some  parliament  to  support  him  ;  but  cannot. 
His  first  parliament,  the  one  they  call  Barebones'  par- 
liament, is,  so  to  speak,  a  convocation  of  the  notables. 
From  all  quarters  of  England  the  leading  ministers  and 
chief  Puritan  officials  nominate  the  men  most  distin- 
guished by  religious  reputation,  influence  and  attach- 
ment to  the  true  cause  :  these  are  assembled  to  shape 
out  a  plan.  They  sanctioned  what  was  past ;  shaped 
as  they  could  what  was  to  come.  They  were  scornfully 
Barebonetf  parliament ;  the  man's  name,  it  seems,  was 
not  Barebones,  but  Barbone — a  good  enough  man. 
Nor  was  it  a  jest,  their  work  ;  it  was  a  most  serious 
reality — a  trial  on  the  part  of  these  Puritan  notables 
how  far  the  law  of  Christ  could  become  the  law  of  this 
England.  There  were  men  of  sense  among  them,  men 
of  some  quality ;  men  of  deep  piety  I  suppose  the  most 
of  them  were.  They  failed,  it  seems,  and  broke  down, 
endeavoring  to  reform  the  court  of  chancery !  They 
dissolved  themselves,  as  incompetent ;  delivered  up 
their  power  again  into  the  hands  of  the  Lord  General 
Cromwell,  to  do  with  it  what  he  liked  and  could, 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  275 

What  will  he  do  with  it  ?  The  Lord  General  Crom- 
well, "commander-iii-chief  of  all  the  forces  raised  and 
to  be  raised ; "  he  hereby  sees  himself,  at  this  unex- 
ampled juncture,  as  it  were  the  one  available  authority 
left  in  England,  nothing  between  England  and  utter 
anarchy  but  him  alone.  Such  is  the  undeniable  fact  of 
his  position  and  England's,  there  and  then.  "What  will 
he  do  with  it  ?  After  deliberation,  he  decides  that  he 
will  accept  it ;  will  formally,  with  public  solemnity, 
say  and  vow  before  God  and  man,  "  Yes,  the  fact  is  so 
and  I  will  do  the  best  I  can  with  it !  "  Protectorship, 
instrument  of  government — these  are  the  external 
forms  of  the  thing ;  worked  out  and  sanctioned  as  they 
could  in  the  circumstances  be,  by  the  judges,  by  the 
leading  official  people,  "  council  of  officers  and  persons 
of  interest  in  the  nation  :  "  and  as  for  the  thing  itself, 
undeniably  enough,  at  the  pass  matters  had  now  come 
to,  there  was  no  alternative  but  anarchy  or  that. 
Puritan  England  might  accept  it  or  not ;  but  Puritan 
England  was,  in  real  truth,  saved  from  suicide  thereby ! 
I  believe  the  Puritan  people  did,  in  an  inarticulate, 
grumbling,  yet  on  the  whole  grateful  and  real  way,  ac- 
cept this  anomalous  act  of  Oliver's ;  at  least,  he  and 
they  together  made  it  good  and  always  better  to  the 
last.  But  in  their  parliamentary  articulate  way,  they 
had  their  difficulties  and  never  knew  fully  what  to 
say  to  it ! 

Oliver's  second  parliament,  properly  his  first  regular 
parliament,  chosen  by  the  rule  laid  down  in  the  instru- 
ment of  government,  did  assemble  and  worked — but 
got,  before  long,  into  bottomless  questions  as  to  the 
protector's  right,  as  to  "  usurpation,"  and  so  forth  ;  and 
had  at  the  earliest  legal  day  to  be  dismissed.  Crom- 
well's concluding  speech  to  these  men  is  a 


276  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

one.  So  likewise  to  his  third  parliament,  in  similar  re- 
buke for  their  pedantries  and  obstinacies.  Most  rude, 
chaotic,  all  these  speeches  are  ;  but  most  earnest-look- 
ing. You  would  say,  it  was  a  sincere  helpless  man  ; 
not  used  to  speak  the  great  inorganic  thought  of  him, 
but  to  act  it  rather !  A  helplessness  of  utterance,  in 
such  bursting  fullness  of  meaning.  He  talks  much 
about  "  births  of  providence  : "  all  these  changes,  so 
many  victories  and  events,  were  not  forethoughts,  and 
theatrical  contrivances  of  men,  of  me  or  of  men  ;  it  is 
blind  blasphemers  that  will  persist  in  calling  them  so  ! 
He  insists  with  a  heavy  sulphurous  wrathful  emphasis 
on  this.  As  he  well  might.  As  if  a  Cromwell  in  that 
dark  huge  game  he  had  been  playing,  the  world  wholly 
thrown  into  chaos  round  him,  had  foreseen  it  all,  and 
played  it  all. off  like  a  precontrived  puppet  show  by 
wood  and  wire !  These  things  were  foreseen  by  no 
man,  he  says ;  no  man  could  tell  what  a  day  would 
bring  forth  ;  they  were  "  births  of  providence,"  God's 
finger  guided  us  on,  and  we  came  at  last  to  clear 
height  of  victory,  God's  cause  triumphant  in  these 
nations ;  and  you  as  a  parliament  could  assemble  to- 
gether, and  say  in  what  manner  all  this  could  be  or- 
ganized^ reduced  into  rational  feasibility  among  the 
affairs  of  men.  "  You  have  had  such  an  opportunity 
as  no  parliament  in  England  ever  had."  Christ's  law, 
the  right  and  true,  was  to  be  in  some  measure  made 
the  law  of  this  land.  In  place  of  that,  you  have  got 
into  your  idle  pedantries,  constitutionalities,  bottomless 
cavilings  and  questionings  about  written  laws  for  my 
coming  here — and  would  send  the  whole  matter  in 
chaos  again,  because  I  have  no  notary's  parchment,  but 
only  God's  voice  from  the  battle-whirlwind,  for  being 
president  among  you  !  That  opportunity  is  gone  j  an4 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  277 

we  know  not  when  it  will  return.  You  have  had  your 
constitutional  logic ;  and  Mammon's  law,  not  Christ's 
law,  rules  yet  in  this  land.  "God  be  judge  between 
you  and  me !  "  These  are  his  final  words  to  them  : 
Take  you  your  constitution  formulas  in  your  hand; 
and  I  my  mformal  struggles,  purposes,  realities 
and  acts;  and  "God  be  judge  between  you  and 
me!" 

We  said  above  what  shapeless,  involved  chaotic 
things  the  printed  speeches  of  Cromwell  are.  Will/idly 
ambiguous,  unintelligible,  say  the  most :  a  hypocrite 
shrouding  himself  in  confused  Jesuitic  jargon !  To  me 
they  do  not  seem  so.  I  will  say  rather,  they  afforded 
the  first  glimpses  I  could  ever  get  into  the  reality  of 
this  Cromwell,  nay  into  the  possibility  of  him.  Try  to 
believe  that  he  means  something,  search  lovingly 
what  that  may  be:  you  will  find  a  real  speech  lying 
imprisoned  in  the  broken  rude  tortuous  utterances ;  a 
meaning  in  that  great  heart  of  this  inarticulate  man  ! 
You  will,  for  the  first  time,  begin  to  see  that  he  was  a 
man  ;  not  an  enigmatic  chimera,  unintelligible  to  you, 
incredible  to  you.  The  histories  and  biographies 
written  of  this  Cromwell,  written  in  shallow  skeptical 
generations  that  could  not  know  or  conceive  of  a  deep 
believing  man,  are  far  more  obscure  than  Cromwell's 
speeches.  You  look  through  them  only  into  the  infinite 
vague  of  black  and  the  inane.  "Heats  and  jealousies," 
says  Lord  Clarendon  himself  :  "  heats  and  jealousies," 
mere  crabbed  whims,  theories  and  crotchets  ;  these  in- 
duced slow  sober  quiet  Englishmen  to  lay  down  their 
plows  and  work ;  and  fly  into  red  fury  of  confused 
war  against  the  best  conditioned  of  kings!  Try  if 
you  can  find  that  true.  Skepticism  writen  about 
belief  may  have  great  gifts ;  but  it  is  reallv 


278  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

vires  there.  It  is  blindness  laying  down  the  laws  of 
optics. 

Cromwell's  third  parliament  split  on  the  same  rock 
as  his  second.  Ever  the  constitutional  formula :  how 
came  you  there  ?  Show  us  some  notary  parchment ! 
Blind  pedants  :  "  Why,  surely  the  same  power  which 
makes  you  a  parliament,  that,  and  something  more, 
made  me  a  protector  ! "  If  my  protectorship  is  noth- 
ing, what  in  the  name  of  wonder  is  your  parliamenteer- 
ship,  a  reflex  and  creation  of  that  ? 

Parliaments  having  failed,  there  remained  nothing 
but  the  way  of  despotism.  Military  dictators  each 
with  his  district,  to  coerce  the  royalist  and  other  gain- 
savers,  to  govern  them,  if  not  by  act  of  parliament, 
then  by  the  sword.  Formula  shall  not  carry  it,  while 
the  reality  is  here !  I  will  go  on,  protecting  oppressed 
Protestants  abroad,  appointing  just  judges,  wise  man- 
agers, at  home,  cherishing  true  gospel  ministers ;  doing 
the  best  I  can  to  make  England  a  Christian  England, 
greater  than  old  Rome,  the  queen  of  Protestant  Christ- 
ianity ;  I,  since  you  will  not  help  me ;  I  while  God 
leaves  me  life !  Why  did  he  not  give  it  up ;  retire  in- 
to obscurity  again,  since  the  law  would  not  acknowl- 
edge him,  cry  several.  That  is  where  they  mistake. 
For  him  there  was  no  giving  of  it  up !  Prime  Minis- 
ters have  governed  countries,  Pitt,  Pombal,  Choiseul; 
and  their  word  was  a  law  while  it  held :  but  this  prime 
minister  was  one  that  could  not  get  resigned.  Let  him 
once  resign,  Charles  Stuart  and  the  cavaliers  waited  to 
kill  him ;  to  kill  the  cause  and  him.  Once  embarked, 
there  is  no  retreat,  no  return.  This  prime  minister 
could  retire  no  whither  except  into  his  tomb. 

One  is  sorry  for  Cromwell  in  his  old  days.  His 
complaint  is  incessant  of  the  heavy  burden  Providence 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO.  279 

has  laid  on  him.  Heavy ;  which  he  must  bear  till 
death.  Old  Colonel  Hutchinson.  as  his  wife  relates  it, 
Hutchinson,  his  old  battle-mate,  coming  to  see  him  on 
some  indispensable  business,  much  against  his  will — 
Cromwell "  follows  him  to  the  door,"  in  a  most  fraternal, 
domestic,  conciliatory  style  ;  begs  that  he  would  be  re- 
conciled to  him,  his  old  brother  in  arms :  says  how 
much  it  grieves  him  to  be  misunderstood,  deserted  by 
true  fellow-soldiers,  dear  to  him  from  of  old:  the  rigorous 
Hutchinson,  cased  in  his  republican  formula,  sullenly 
goes  his  way.  And  the  man's  head  now  white ;  his 
strong  arm  growing  weary  with  its  long  work !  I 
think  always  too  of  his  poor  mother,  now  very  old, 
living  in  that  palace  of  his ;  a  right  brave  woman  ;  as 
indeed  they  lived  all  an  honest  God-fearing  household 
there  :^if  she  heard  a  shot  go  off,  she  thought  it  was 
her  son  killed.  He  had  to  come  to  her  at  least  once  a 
day,  that  she  might  see  with  her  own  eyes  that  he  was 
yet  living.  The  poor  old  mother!  What  had  this 
man  gained ;  what  had  he  gained  ?  He  had  a  life  of 
sore  strife  and  toil,  to  his  last  day.  Fame,  ambition, 
place  in  history  ?  His  dead  body  was  hung  in  chains  ; 
his  "  place  in  history  " — place  in  history  forsooth  ! 
has  been  a  place  of  ignominy,  accusation,  blackness 
and  disgrace ;  and  here,  this  day,  who  knows  if  it  is  not 
rash  in  me  to  be  among  the  first  that  ever  ventured  to 
pronounce  him  not  a  knave  and  liar,  but  a  genuinely 
honest  man !  Peace  to  him.  Did  he  not,  in  spite  of 
all,  accomplish  much  for  us  U  We  walk  smoothly  over 
his  grea^  rough  heroic  life  ;  step  over  his  body  sunk  in 
the  ditch  there.  We  need  not  spurn  it,  as  we  step  on 
it !  Let  the  hero  rest.  It  was  not  to  men's  judgment 
that  he  appealed  :  nor  have  men  judged  him  very  well. 
Precisely  a  century  and  a  year  after  this  of  Puritan- 


280  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

ism  had  got  itself  hushed  up  into  decent  composure, 
and  its  results  made  smooth,  in  1688,  there  broke  out 
a  far  deeper  explosion,  much  more  difficult  to  hush  up, 
known  to  all  mortals,  and  like  to  be  long  known,  by 
the  name  of  French  revolution.  It  is  properly  the 
third  and  final  act  of  Protestantism  ;  the  explosive 
confused  return  of  mankind  to  reality  and  fact,  now 
that  they  were  perishing  of  semblance  and  sham. 
We  call  our  English  Puritanism  the  second  act :  "  Well 
then,  the  Bible  is  true ;  let  us  go  by  the  Bible  !"  "In 
church,"  said  Luther ;  "In  church  and  state,"  said  Crom- 
well, "let  us  go  by  what  actually  is  God's  truth." 
Men  have  to  return  to  reality  ;  they  cannot  live  on 
semblance.  The  French  revolution,  or  third  act,  we 
may  well  call  the  final  one  ;  for  lower  than  that  savage 
sansculottism  men  cannot  go.  They  stand  there  on 
the  nakedest  haggard  fact,  undeniable  in  all  seasons 
and  circumstances  ;  and  may  and  must  begin  again  con- 
fidently to  build  up  from  that.  The  French  explosion, 
like  the  English  one,  got  its  king  —  who  had  no 
notary  parchment  to  show  for  himself.  We  have  still 
to  glance  for  a  moment  at  Napoleon,  our  second  mod- 
ern king. 

Napoleon  does  by  no  means  seem  to  me  so  great  a 
man  as  Cromwell.  His  enormous  victories  which 
reached  over  all  Europe,  while  Cromwell  abode  mainly 
in  our  little  England,  are  but  as  the  high  stilts  on 
which  the  man  is  seen  standing;  the  stature  of  the 
man  is  not  altered  thereby.  I  find  in  him  no  such 
sincerity  as  in  Cromwell ;  only  a  far  inferior  sort.  No 
silent  walking,  through  long  years,  with  the  awful  un- 
namable  of  this  universe ;  "  walking  with  God,"  as  he 
called  it :  and  faith  and  strength  in  that  alone  :  latent 
thought  and  valor,  content  to  lie  latent,  then  burst  out 


THE  HERO  AS  RING.  281 

as  in  blaze  of  heaven's  lightning !  Napoleon  lived  in 
an  age  when  God  was  no  longer  believed ;  the  meaning 
of  all  silence,  latency,  was  thought  to  be  nonentity : 
he  had  to  begin  not  out  of  the  Puritan  Bible,  but  out 
of  poor  skeptical  encyclopedies.  This  was  the  length 
the  man  carried  it.  Meritorious  to  get  so  far.  His 
compact,  prompt,  everyway  articulate  character  is  in 
itself  perhaps  small,  compared  with  our  great  chaotic 
inarticulate  Cromwell's.  Instead  of  "  dumb  prophet 
struggling  to  speak,"  we  have  a  portentous  mixture  of 
the  qjuapk  withal !  Hume's  notion  of  the  fanatic  hyp- 
ocrite, with  such  as  it  has,  will  apply  much  better  to 
Napoleon  than  it  did  to  Cromwell,  to  Mahomet  or  the 
like — where  indeed  taken  strictly  it  has  hardly  any 
truth  at  all.  An  element  of  blamable  ambition  shows 
itself,  from  the  first,  in  this  man ;  gets  the  victory  over 
him  at  last,  and  involves  him  and  his  work  in  ruin. 

"  False  as  a  bulletin  "  became  a  proverb  in  Napoleon's 
time.  He  makes  what  excuse  he  could  for  it :  that  it 
was  necessary  to  mislead  the  enemy,  to  keep-up  his 
own  men's  courage,  and  so  forth.  On  the  whole, 
there  are  no  excuses.  A  man  in  no  case  has  liberty  to 
tell  lies.  It  had  been,  in  the  long  run,  letter  for  Napo- 
leon too  if  he  had  not  told  any.  In  fact,  if  a  man  have 
any  purpose  reaching  beyond  the  hour  and  day,  meant 
to  be  found  extant  next  day,  what  good  can  it  ever  be 
to  promulgate  lies?  The  lies  are  found  out;  ruinous 
penalty  is  exacted  for  them.  No  man  will  believe  the 
liar  next  time  even  when  he  speaks  truth,  when  it  is  of 
the  last  importance  that  he  be  believed.  The  old  cry 
of  wolf  !  A  lie  is  no-thing ;  you  cannot  of  nothing 
make  something;  you  make  nothing  at  last,  and  lose 
your  labor  into  the  bargain. 

Yes  Napoleon  had  a  sincerity :  we  are  to  distinguish 


282  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

between  what  is  superficial  and  what  is  fundamental 
in  insincerity.  Across  these  outer  manoeuver ings  and 
quackeries  of  his,  which  were  many  and  most  blam- 
able,  let  us  discern  withal  that  the  man  had  a  certain 
instinctive  ineradicable  feeling  for  reality  ;  and  did  base 
himself  upon  fact,  so  long  as  he  had  any  basis.  He 
has  an  instinct  of  nature  better  than  his  culture  was. 
His  savans,  Bourrienne  tells  us,  in  that  voyage  to  Egypt 
were  one  evening  busily  occupied  arguing  that  there 
could  be  no  God.  They  had  proved  it,  to  their  satis- 
faction, by  all  manner  of  logic.  Napoleon  looking  up 
into  the  stars,  answers  :  "  Very  ingenious,  messieure  ; 
but  who  made  all  that !"  The  atheistic  logic  runs  off 
from  him  like  water ;  the  great  fact  stares  him  in  the 
face :  "  Who  made  all  that  ?"  So  too  in  practice :  he, 
as  every  man  that  can  be  great,  or  have  victory  in  thk 
world,  sees  through  all  entanglements,  the  practical 
heart  of  the  matter ;  drives  straight  toward  that. 
When  the  steward  of  his  Tuileries  palace  was  exhibit- 
ing the  new  unholstery,  with  praises,  and  demonstra- 
tion how  glorious  it  was,  and  how  cheap  withal,  Napo- 
leon, making  little  answer,  asked  for  a  pair  of  scissors, 
clipped  one  of  the  gold  tassels  from  a  window-curtain, 
put  it  in  his  pocket,  and  walked  on.  Some  days  after- 
ward, he  produced  it  at  the  right  moment,  to  the 
horror  of  his  upholstery  functionary ;  it  was  not  gold 
but  tinsel !  In  St.  Helena,  it  is  notable  how  he  still, 
to  his  last  days,  instists  on  the  practical,  and  real. 
"  Why  talk  and  complain ;  above  all,  why  quarrel  with 
one  another?  There  is  no  result  in  it;  it  comes  to 
nothing  that  one  can  do.  Say  nothing,  if  one  can  do 
nothing !  "  He  speaks  often  so,  to  his  poor  discontented 
followers ;  he  is  like  a  piece  of  silent  strength  in  the 
middle  of  their  morbid  querulousness  there. 


TUB  HERO  AS  RING.  283 

And  accordingly  was  there  not  what  we  can  call  a 
faith  in  him,  genuine  so  far  as  it  went  ?  That  this  new 
enormous  democracy  asserting  itself  here  in  the  French 
revolution  is  an  insuppressible  fact,  which  the  whole 
world  with  its  old  forces  and  institutions,  cannot  put 
down ;  this  was  a  true  insight  of  his,  and  took  his  con- 
science and  enthusiasm  along  with  it — a  faith.  And 
did  he  not  interpret  the  dim  purport  of  it  well  ?  "La 
carriers  ouverte  aux  talens,  The  implements  to  him 
who  can  handle  them : "  this  actually  is  the  truth,  and 
even  the  whole  truth  ;  it  includes  whatever  the  French 
revolution,  or  any  revolution,  could  mean.  Napoleon, 
in  his  first  period,  was  a  true  democrat.  And  yet  by 
the  nature  of  him,  fostered  too  by  his  military  trade, 
he  knew  that  democracy,  if  it  were  a  true  thing  at  all, 
could  not  be  an  anarchy :  the  man  had  a  heart-hatred 
for  anarchy.  On  that  twentieth  of  June  (1792), 
Bourrienne  and  he  sat  in  a  coffee-house,  as  the  mob 
rolled  by ;  Napoleon  expresses  the  deepest  contempt 
for  persons  in  authority  that  they  do  not  restrain  this 
rabble.  On  the  tenth  of  August  he  wonders  why 
there  is  no  man  to  command  these  poor  Swiss;  they 
would  conquer  if  there  were.  Such  a  faith  in  democ- 
racy, yet  hatred  of  anarchy,  it  is  that  carries  Napo- 
leon through  all  his  great  work.  Through  his  brilliant 
Italian  campaigns,  onward  to  the  peace  of  Leoben,  ono 
would  say,  his  inspiration  is :  "Triumph  to  the  French 
revolution ;  assertion  of  it  against  these  Austrian  sim- 
ulacra that  pretend  to  call  it  a  simulacrum ! "  With- 
al, however  he  feels,  and  has  a  right  to  feel,  how 
necessary  a  strong  authority  is;  how  the  revolution 
cannot  prosper  or  last  without  such.  To  bridle  in  that 
great  devouring,  self-devouring  French  revolution ;  to 
tame  it,  so  that  its  intrinsic  purpose  can  be  made  good, 


284  LECTURK8  ON  SKROK8. 

that  it  may  become  organic,  and  be  able  to  live 
among  other  organisms  and.  formed  thing,  not  as  a 
wasting  destruction  alone :  is  not  this  still  what  he 
partly  aimed  at,  as  the  true  purport  of  his  life ;  nay 
wrhat  he  actually  managed  to  do  ?  Through  Wagrams, 
Austerlitzes ;  triumph  after  triumph — he  triumphed 
so  far.  There  was  an  eye  to  see  in  this  man,  a  soul 
to  dare  and  do.  He  rose  naturally  to  be  the  king. 
All  men  saw  that  he  was  such.  The  common  soldiers 
used  to  say  on  the  march :  "  These  babbling  avocats, 
up  at  Paris ;  all  talk  and  no  work !  What  wonder  it 
runs  all  wrong?  We  shall  have  to  go  and  put  our 
petit  caporal  there  ?"  They  went,  and  put  him  there ; 
they  and  France  at  large.  Chief-consulship,  emperor- 
ship, victory  over  Europe ;  till  the  poor  lieutenant  of 
La  Fere,  not  unnaturally,  might  seem  to  himself  the 
greatest  of  all  men  that  had  been  in  the  world  for  some 
ages. 

But  at  this  point,  I  think,  the  fatal  charlatan  ele- 
ment got  the  upper  hand.  He  apostatized  from  his  old 
faith  in  facts,  took  to  believing  in  semblances ;  strove 
to  connect  himself  with  Austrian  dynasties,  popedoms, 
with  the  old  false  feudalilies  which  he  once  saw  clearly 
to  be  false ;  considered  that  he  would  found  "  his 
dynasty "  and  so  forth ;  that  the  enormous  French 
revolution  meant  only  that!  The  man  was  "given-up 
to  strong  delusion,  that  he  should  believe  a  lie  ;"a 
fearful  but  most  sure  thing.  He  did  not  know  true 
from  false  now  when  he  looked  at  them — the  fearfulest 
penalty  a  man  pays  for  yielding  to  untruth  of  heart. 
Self  and  false  ambition  had  now  become  his  god  :  self- 
deception  once  yielded  to,  all  other  deceptions  follow 
naturally  more  and  more.  What  a  paltry  patchwork 
of  theatrical  paper-mantles,  tinsel  and  mummery,  had 


THE  HKRO  AS  KING.  285 

this  man  wrapped  his  own  great  reality  in,  thinking  to 
make  it  more  real  thereby  !  His  hollow  pops' s-concor- 
dcit  pretending  to  be  a  re-establishment  of  Catholicism, 
felt  by  himself  to  be  the  method  of  extirpating  it,  "la 
vaccine  de  la  religion:"  his  ceremonial  coronations, 
consecrations  by  the  old  Italian  chimera  in  Notre  Dame, 
"wanting  nothing  to  complete  the  pomp  of  it,"  as  Au 
gereau  said,  "  nothing  but  the  half-million  of  men  who 
had  died  to  put  an  end  to  all  that !"  Cromwell's  in- 
auguration was  by  the  sword  and  Bible :  what  we 
must  call  a  genuinely  true  one.  Sword  and  Bible  were 
borne  before  him,  without  any  chimera:  were  not 
these  the  real  emblems  of  Puritanism;  its  true  decoration 
and  insignia !  It  had  used  them  both  in  a  very  real  man- 
ner, and  pretended  to  stand  by  them  now!  But  this  poor 
Napoleon  mistook :  he  believed  too  much  in  the  dupe- 
ability  of  men ;  saw  no  fact  deeper  in  man  than  hun- 
ger and  this !  He  was  mistaken.  Like  a  man  that 
should  build  upon  cloud ;  his  house  and  he  fall  down  in 
confused  wreck,  and  depart  out  of  the  world. 

Alas,  in  all  of  us  this  charlatan  element  exists ;  and 
might  be  developed,  were  the  temptation  strong  oncingh. 
"  Lead  us  not  into  temptation !"  But  it  is  fatal,  I  say, 
that  itfie  developed.  The  thing  into  which  it  p^fors 
as  a  cognizable  ingredient  is  doomed  to  be  alto''  -iiier 
transitory ;  and  however  huge  it  may  look,  is  if  ::*{self 
small.  Napoleon's  working,  accordingly,  wlW'was 
it  with  all  the  noise  it  made  ?  A  flash  as  of  gunpowder 
wide-spread  ;  a  blazing-up  as  of  dry  heath.  For  an  hour 
the  whole  universe  seems  wrapped  in  smoke  and  flame  ; 
but  only  for  an  hour.  It  goes  out :  the  universe  with 
its  old  mountains  and  streams,  its  stars  above  and  kind 
soil  beneath,  is  still  there. 

The  Duke  of  Weimar  told  his   friends  always,  To 


£80  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

be  of  courage ;  this  Napoleonism  was  unjust,  a  false- 
hood, and  could  not  last.  It  is  true  doctrine.  The 
heavier  this  Napleon  trampled  on  the  world  holding  it 
tyraneously  down,  the  fiercer  would  the  world's  recoil 
against  him  be,  one  day.  Injustice  pays  itself  with 
frightful  compound  interest.  I  am  not  sure  but  he 
had  better  have  lost  his  best  park  of  artillery,  or  had 
his  best  regiment  drowned  in  the  sea,  than  shot  that  poor 
German  bookseller,  Palm !  It  was  a  palpable  tyran- 
nous murderous  injustice,  which  no  man,  let  him  paint 
an  inch  thick,  could  make  out  to  be  other.  It  burned 
deep  into  the  hearts  of  men,  it  and  the  like  of  it ;  sup- 
pressed fire  flashed  in  the  eyes  of  men,  as  they  thought 
of  it — waiting  their  day :  Which  day  came :  Ger- 
many rose  round  him.  "What  Napoleon  did  will  in  the 
long  run  amount  to  what  he  did  justly ;  what  nature 
with  her  laws  will  sanction.  To  what  of  reality  was 
in  him ;  to  that  and  nothing  more.  The  rest  was  all 
smoke  and  waste.  La  carrier e  ouvert  aux  talens :  that 
great  true  message,  which  has  yet  to  articulate  and 
fulfill  itself  everywhere,  he  left  in  a  most  inarticulate 
state.  He  was  a  great  ebauclie,  a  rude  draught  never 
completed  ;  as  indeed  what  great  man  is  other  ?  Left 
in  too  rude  a  state,  alas ! 

His  notions  of  the  world,  as  he  expresses  them  there 
at  St.  Helena,  are  almost  tragical  to  consider.  He 
seems  to  feel  the  most  unaffected  surprise  that  it  has 
all  gone  so ;  that  he  is  flung  out  on  the  rock  here,  and 
the  world  is  still  moving  on  its  axis.  France  is  great, 
and  all  great ;  and  at  bottom,  he  is  France.  England 
itself,  he  says,  is  by  nature  only  an  appendage  of 
France  ;  "  another  Isle  of  Oleron  to  France."  So  it 
was  by  nature,  by  Napoleon-nature  ;  and  yet  look  how 
in  fact — HERE  AM  I !  He  cannot  understand  it :  incon- 


THE  HERO  AS  KINO,  287 

ceivable  that  the  reality  has  not  corresponded  to  his 
programme  of  it;  that  France  was  not  all-great,  that  he 
was  not  France.  "  Strong  delusion,"  that  he  should 
believe  the  thing  to  be  which  is  not !  The  compact, 
clear-seeing,  decisive  Italian  nature  of  him,  strong, 
genuine,  which  he  once  had,  has  enveloped  itself,  half- 
dissolved  itself,  in  a  turbid  atmosphere  of  France 
fanfaronade.  The  world  was  not  disposed  to  be  trod- 
den-down  underfoot ;  to  be  bound  into  masses  and 
built  together,  as  he  liked,  for  a  pedestal  to  France  and 
him :  the  world  had  quite  other  purposes  in  view  !  Na- 
poleon's astonishment  is  extreme.  But  alas,  what  help 
now  ?  He  had  gone  that  way  of  his ;  and  nature  also 
had  gone  her  way.  Having  once  parted  with 
reality,  he  tumbles  helpless  in  vacuity ;  no  rescue  for 
him.  He  had  to  sink  there,  mournfully  as  man  seldom 
did ;  and  break  his  great  heart,  and  die — this  poor 
Napoleon :  a  great  implement  too  soon  wasted,  till  it 
was  useless  :  our  last  great  man ! 

Our  last,  in  a  double  sense.  For  here  finally  these 
wide  roamings  of  ours  through  so  many  times  and 
places,  in  search  and  study  of  heroes,  are  to  terminate. 
I  am  sorry  for  it :  there  was  pleasure  for  me  in  this 
business,  if  also  much  pain.  It  is  a  great  subject,  and 
a  most  grave  and  wide  one,  this  which,  not  to  be  too 
grave  about  it,  I  have  named  hero-worship.  It  enters 
deeply,  as  I  think,  into  the  secret  of  mankind's 
ways  and  vitalest  interests  in  this  world,  and  is  well 
worth,  explaining  at  present.  With  six  months,  instead 
of  six  days,  we  might  have  done  better.  I  promised 
to  break  ground  on  it ;  I  know  not  whether  I  have 
even  managed  to  do  that.  I  have  had  to  tear  it  up  in 
the  rudest  manner  in  order  to  get  inte  it  at  all.  Often 


288  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

enough,  with  these  abrupt  utterances  thrown  out  iso- 
lated, unexplained  has  your  tolerance  been  put  to  the 
trial.  Tolerance,  patient  candor,  all  hoping  favor 
and  kindness,  which  I  will  not  speak  of  at  present. 
The  accomplished  and  distinguished,  the  beautiful,  the 
wise,  something  of  what  is  bes*/  »n  England,  have 
listened  patiently  to  my  rude  words.  With  many 
feelings,  I  heartily  thank  you  all ;  and  say,  good  be 
with  you  all! 


SUMMARY. 


LECTURE  I. 

THE  HERO  AS  DIVINITY — ODIN — PAGANISM — SCANDINAVIAN 
MYTHOLOGY. 

HEROES  :  Universal  History  consists  essentially  of  their  united 
Biographies.  Religion  not  a  man's  church-creed,  but  his  practical 
belief  about  himself  and  the  Universe:  Both  with  Men  and  Nations  it 
is  the  One  fact  about  them  which  creatively  determines  all  the  rest. 
Heathenism:  Christianity:  Modern  Skepticism.  The  Hero  as  Divin- 
ity. Paganism  a  fact;  not  Quackery,  nor  Allegory:  Not  to  be  pre- 
tentiously "explained;"  to  be  looked  at  as  old  Thought,  and  with 
sympathy. — p.  1. 

Nature  no  more  seems  divine  except  to  the  Prophet  or  Poet,  be- 
cause men  have  ceased  to  think:  To  the  Pagan  Thinker,  as  to  the 
child-man,  all  was  either  godlike  or  God.  Canopus:  Man.  Hero 
worship  the  basis  of  Religion,  Loyalty,  Society.  A  Hero  not  the 
"creature  of  the  time:"  Hero  worship  indestructible.  Johnson: 
Voltaire.— p.  8. 

Scandinavian  Paganism  the  Religion  of  our  Fathers.  Iceland,  the 
home  of  the  Norse  Poets,  described.  The  Edda.  The  primary 
characterstic  of  Norse  Paganism,  the  impersonations  of  the  visible 
workings  of  Nature.  Jo' tuns  and  the  Gods.  Fire:  Frost:  Thunder: 
The  Sun  :  Sea-Tempest.  Mythus  of  the  Creation  :  The  Life-Tree 
Igdrasil.  The  Modern  "Machine  of  the  Universe." — p.  18. 

The  Norse  Creed,  as  recorded,  the  summation  of  several  successive 
systems:  Originally  the  shape  given  to  the  national  thought  by  their 
first  "Man  of  Genius."  Odin:  He  has  no  history  or  date;  yet  was 
no  mere  adjective,  but  a  man  of  flesh  and  blood.  How  deified.  The 
World  of  Nature,  to  every  man  a  Fantasy  of  Himself.— p.  24. 

Odin  the  inventer  of  Runes,  of  Letters  and  Poetry.  His  reception 
as  a  Hero:  the  pattern  Norse  Man ;  a  God ;  His  shadow  over  the 
whole  History  of  his  People,— p.  33. 


290  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

The  essence  of  Norse  Paganism,  not  so  much  Morality,  as'a  sincere 
recognition  of  Nature:  Sincerity  better  than  Gracefulness.  The  Alle- 
gories, the  after  creations  of  the  Faith.  Main  practical  Belief:  Hall 
of  Odin:  Valkyrs:  Destiny:  Necessity  of  Valor.  Its  worth:  Their 
Sea-Kings,  Woodcutter  Kings,  our  spiritual  Progenitors.  The 
growth  of  Odenism. — p.  35. 

The  strong  simplicity  of  Norse  lore  quite  unrecognized  by  Gray. 
Thor's  veritable  Norse  rage:  Balder,  the  white  Sungod.  How  the 
old  Norse  heart  loves  the  Thundergod,  and  sports  with  him:  Huge 
Brobdignag  genius,  needing  only  to  be  tamed  down,  into  Shakes- 
peares,  Goethes.  Truth  in  the  Norse  Songs;  This  World  a  show. 
Thor's  Invasion  of  Jotunheim.  The  Ragnarok,  or  Twilight  of 
the  Gods:  The  Old  must  die,  that  the  New  and  Better  may  be 
born.  Thor's  last  appearance.  The  Norse  Creed  a  Consecration 
of  Valor.  It  and  the  whole  Past  a  possession  of  the  Present.— p.  40. 


LECTURE  II. 

THE  HERO  AS  PROPHET — MAHOMET — ISHAM. 

THE  HERO  no  longer  regarded  as  a  God,  but  as  one  god-inspired. 
All  Heroes  primarily  of  the  same  stuff  ;  differing  according  to  their 
reception.  The  welcome  of  its  Heroes,  the  truest  test  of  an  epoch. 
Odin:  Burns. — p.  49. 

Mahomet  a  true  Prophet;  not  a  scheming  Impostor.  A  Great 
Man,  and  therefore  first  of  all  a  sincere  man:  No  man  to  be  judged 
merely  by  his  faults.  David  the  Hebrew  King.  Of  all  acts  for  man 
repentance  the  most  divine:  The  deadliest  sin,  a  supercilious  con- 
sciousness of  none. — p.  51. 

Arabia  described.  The  Arabs  always  a  gifted  people;  of  wild 
strong  feelings,  and  of  iron  restraint  over  these.  Their  Religiosity: 
Their  Star- worship :  Their  Prophets  and  inspired  men ;  from  Job 
downward.  '  Their  -Holy  Places.  Mecca,  its  site,  history  and  govern- 
ment.— p.  55. 

Mahomet.  His  youth:  His  fond  Grandfather.  Had  no  book-learn- 
ing: Travels  to  the  Syrian  Fairs;  and  first  comes  in  contact  with  the 
Christian  Religion.  An  altogether  solid,  brotherly,  genuine  man:  A 
good  laugh,  and  a  good  flash  of  anger  in  him  withal. — p.  60. 

Marries  Kadijah.  Begins  his  Prophet  career  at  forty  years  of 
age.  Allah  Akbar;  God  is  great:  Mam;  we  must  submit  to  God. 


SUMMARY.  291 

Do    we   not    all    live    in    Islam?     Mahomet,     "the    Prophet    of 
God."— p.  62. 

The  good  Kadi j  ah  believes  in  him ;  Mahomet's  gratitude.  His 
slow  progress:  Among  forty  of  his  kindred,  young  Ali  alone  joined 
him.  His  good  Uncle  expostulates  with  him:  Mahomet,  bursting 
into  tears,  persists  in  his  mission.  The  Hegira.  Propagating  by  the 
sword:  First  get  your  sword:  A  thing  will  propagate  itself  as  it  can. 
Nature  a  just  umpire.  Mahomet's  Creed  unspeakably  better  than 
the  wooden  idolatries  and  jangling  Syrian  Sects  extirpated  by 
it.— p.  67. 

The  Koran,  the  universal  standard  of  Mahometan  life:  An  imper- 
fectly, badly  written,  but  genuine  book:  Enthusiastic  extempore 
preaching,  amid  the  hot  haste  of  wrestling  with  flesh  and  blood  and 
spiritual  enemies.  Its  direct  poetic  insight.  The  World,  Man, 
human  Compassion:  all  wholly  miraculous  to  Mahomet. — p.  75. 

His  religion  did  not  succeed  by  "  being  easy  :"  None  can.  The 
sensual  part  of  it  not  of  Mahomet's  making.  He  himself,  frugal ; 
patched  his  own  clothes ;  proved  a  hero  in  a  rough  actual  trial  of 
twenty-three  years.  Traits  of  his  generosity  and  resignation.  His 
total  freedom  from  cant. — p.  82. 

His  moral  precepts  not  always  of  the  superfinest  sort ;  yet  is  there 
always  a  tendency  to  good  in  them.  His  heaven  and  Hell  sensual, 
yet  not  altogether  so.  Infinite  Nature  of  Duty.  The  evil  of  sensual 
ity,  in  the  slavery  to  pleasant  things,  not  in  the  enjoyment  of  them. 
Mahonietanism  a  religion  heartily  believed.  To  the  Arab  Nation  it 
was  as  a  birth  from  darkness  into  light :  Arabia  first  became  alive  by 
means  of  it. — p.  86. 


LECTURE  III. 

THE  HERO  AS  POET— DANTE— SHAKESPEARE. 

THE  HERO  as  Divinity  or  Prophet,  inconsistent  with  the  modern 
progress  of  science  :  The  Hero  Poet,  a  figure  comlnon  to  all  ages. 
All  Heroes  at  bottom  the  same  ;  the  different  sphere  constituting  the 
grand  distinction  :  Examples.  Varieties  of  aptitude.— p.  92. 

Poet  and  Prophet  meet  in  Vates :  Their  Gospel  the  same,  for  the 
Beautiful  and  the  Good  are  one.  All  men  somewhat  of  poets  ;  and 
the  highest  Poets  far  from  perfect.  Prose  and  Poetry  or  musical 
Thought.  Song  a  kind  of  inarticulate  unfathomable  speech  :  All 
deep  things  are  Song.  The  Hero  as  Divinity,  as  Prophet  and  then 


292  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

only  as  Poet,  no  indication  that  our  estimate  of  the  Great  Man  is 
diminishing  :  The  Poet  seems  to  be  losing  caste,  but  it  is  rather  that 
our  notions  of  God  are  rising  higher. — p.  94. 

Shakespeare  and  Dante,  Saints  of  Poetry.  Dante  :  His  history,  in 
his  Book  and  Portrait.  His  scholastic  education  and  its  fruit  of  sub- 
tlety, His  miseries  :  Love  of  Beatrice  :  His  marriage  not  happy.  A 
banished  man  :  Will  never  return,  if  to  plead  guilty  be  the  condition. 
His  wanderings  :  "  Come  e  duro  calle."  At  the  Court  of  Delia  Scala. 
The  great  soul  of  Dante,  homeless  on  earth,  made  its  home  more  and 
more  in  Eternity.  His  mystic,  unfathomable  Song.  Death  :  Buried 
at  Ravenna. — p.  101. 

His  "  Divina  Commedia"  a  Song  :  Go  deep  enough,  there  is  music 
everywhere.  The  sincerest  of  Poems  :  It  has  all  been  as  if  molten, 
in  the  hottest  furnace  of  his  soul.  Its  Intensity  and  Pictorial  power. 
The  three  parts  make  up  the  true  Unseen  World  of  the  Middle 
Ages  :  How  the  Christian  Dante  felt  Good  and  Evil  to  be  the  two 
polar  elements  of  this  Creation.  Paganism  and  Christianisin . — p.  106. 

Ten  silent  centuries  found  a  voice  in  Dante.  The  thing  that  is 
uttered  from  the  inmost  parts  of  a  man's  soul  differs  altogether  from 
what  is  uttered  by  the  outer.  The  "  uses"  of  Dante  :  We  will  not 
estimate  the  Sun  by  the  quantity  of  gas  it  saves  us.  Mahomet  and 
Dante  contrasted.  Let  a  man  do  his  work ;  the  fruit  of  it  is  the 
care  of  Another  than  he. — p.  116. 

As  Dante  embodies  musically  the  Inner  Life  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
so  does  Shakespeare  embody  the  Outer  Life  which  grew  therefrom. 
The  strange  outbudding  of  English  Existence  which  we  call 
"Elizabethan  Era."  Shakespeare  the  chief  of  all  poets:  His 
calm,  all-seeing  Intellect  ;  His  marvellous  Portrait-painting. — p.  119. 

The  Poet's  first  gift,  as  it  is  all  men's,  that  he  have  intellect  enough 
— that  he  be  able  to  see.  Intellect  the  summary  of  all  human  gifts  : 
Human  intellect  and  vulpine  intellect  contrasted.  Shakespeare's  in- 
stinctive unconscious  greatness  :  His  works  a  part  of  Nature  and 
partaking  of  her  inexhaustible  depth.  Shakespeare  greater  than 
Dante ;  in  that  he  not  only  sorrowed,  but  triumphed  over  his 
sorrows.  His  mirthf  ulness  and  genuine  overflowing  love  of  laughter. 
His  Historical  Plays,  a  kind  of  National  Epic.  The  Battle  of  Agin- 
court  :  A  noble  Patriotism,  far  other  than  the  "  indifference  "  some- 
times ascribed  to  him.  His  works,  like  so  many  windows,  through 
which  we  see  glimses  of  the  world  that  is  in  him. — p.  129. 

Dante  the  melodious  Priest  of  Middle-Age  Catholicism  :  Out  of  this 
Shakespeare  too  there  rises  a  kind  of  Universal  Psalm,  not  unfit  to 
itself  heard  aiuon^  still  more  sacred.  Psalms-  Shakespeare  a.ri 


SUMMARY.  293 

"unconscious  Prophet;"  and  therein  greater  and  truer  than  Ma- 
honiet.  This  poor  Warwickshire  Peasant  worth  more  to  us  than  a 
whole  regiment  of  highest  Dignitaries  :  Indian  Empire,  or  Shakes- 
peare— which?  An  English  King,  whom  no  time  or  chance  can 
dethrone  :  A  rallying-sign  and  bond  of  brotherhood  for  all  Saxon- 
dom  :  Wheresoever  English  men  and  women  are,  they  will  say  to  one 
another,  "  Yes,  this  Shakespeare  is  ours!" — p.  131. 


LECTURE  IV. 

THE  HERO  AS  PRIEST — LUTHER— REFORMATION — KNOX — 
PURITANISM. 

THE  PRIEST  a  kind  of  Prophet ;  but  more  familiar,  as  the  daily 
enlightener  of  daily  life.  A  true  Reformer  he  who  appeals  to 
Heaven's  invisible  justice  against  Earth's  visible  force.  The  finished 
Poet  often  a  symptom  that  his  epoch  itself  has  reached  perfection 
and  finished.  Alas,  the  battling  Reformer,  too,  is  at  times  a  needful 
and  inevitable  phenomenon  :  Offenses  do  accumulate,  till  they  be- 
come insupportable.  Forms  of  Belief,  modes  of  life  must  perish  ; 
yet  the  Good  of  the  Past  survives,  an  everlasting  possession  for 
us  all.— p.  136. 

Idols,  or  visible  recognized  Symbols,  common  to  all  Religions  : 
Hateful  only  when  insincere  :  The  property  of  every  Hero,  that  he 
come  back  to  sincerity,  to  reality  :  Protestantism  and  "  private  judg- 
ment." No  living  communion  possible  among  men  who  believe  only 
in  hearsays.  The  Hero  Teacher,  who  delivers  men  out  of  darkness 
into  light.  Not  abolition  of  Hero  worship  does  Protestantism 
mean  ;  but  rather  a  whole  World  of  Heroes,  of  sincere  believing 
men.— p.  142. 

Luther ;  his  obscure,  seemingly  insignificant  birth.  His  youth 
schooled  in  adversity  and  stern  reality.  Becomes  a  Monk.  His 
religious  despair :  Discovers  a  Latin  Bible;  No  wonder  he  should 
venerate  the  Bible.  He  visits  Rome.  Meets  the  Pope's  fire  by  fire. 
At  the  Diet  of  Worms:  The  greatest  moment  in  the  modern  History 
of  men. — p.  151. 

The  Wars  that  followed  are  not  to  be  charged  to  the  Reformation. 
The  Old  Religion  once  true:  Theory  of  "  No  Popery  "  foolish  enough 
in  these  days.  Protestantism  not  dead:  German  Literature  and  the 
French  Revolution  rather  considerable  signs  of  life  ! — p.  132. 

HQW  Luther  held  tUe  sovereignty  of  the  Reformation  and  kept 


294  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

Peace  while  lie  lived.  His  written  Works:  Their  rugged  homely 
strength:  His  dialect  became  the  language  of  all  writing.  No  mortal 
heart  to  be  called  braver,  ever  lived  in  that  Teutonic  Kindred,  whose 
character  is  valor:  Yet  a  most  gentle  heart  withal,  full  of  pity  and 
love,  as  the  truly  valiant  heart  ever  is:  Traits  of  character  from  his 
Table  Talk:  His  daughter's  Deathbed  :  The  miraculous  in  Nature. 
His  love  of  Music.  His  Portrait. — p.  163. 

Puritanism  the  only  phasis  of  Protestantism  that  ripened  into  a 
living  faith:  Defective  enough,  but  genuine.  Its  fruit  in  the  world. 
The  sailing  of  the  Mayflower  from  Delft  Haven  the  beginning  of 
American  Saxondom.  In  the  history  of  Scotland  properly  but  one 
epoch  of  world-interest — the  Reformation  by  Knox:  A  "nation  of 
heroes;"  a  believing  nation.  The  Puritanism  of  Scotland  became  that 
of  England,  of  New  England.— p.  169. 

Knox  "guilty  "  of  being  the  bravest  of  all  Scotchmen:  Did  not 
seek  the  post  of  Prophet.  At  the  siege  of  St.  Andrew's  Castle. 
Emphatically  a  sincere  man.  A  Galley -slave  on  the  River  Loire. 
An  Old  Hebrew  Prophet,  in  the  guise  of  an  Edinburgh  Minister  of 
the  Sixteenth  Century.— p.  172. 

Knox  and  Queen  Mary:  "  Who  are  you,  that  presume  to  school  the 
nobles  and  sovereign  of  this  realm?"  "Madam,  a  subject  born 
within  the  same."  His  intolerance— of  falsehood  and  knaveries. 
Not  a  mean  acrid  man;  else  he  had  never  been  virtual  President  and 
Sovereign  of  Scotland.  His  unexpected  vein  of  drollery:  A  cheery 
social  man;  practical,  cautious  hopeful,  patient.  His  "devout  im- 
agination "  of  a  Theocracy,  or  Government  of  God.  Hildebrand 
wished  a  Theocracy;  Cromwell  wished  it,  fought  for  it:  Mahomet 
attained  it.  In  one  form  or  other,  it  is  the  one  thing  to  be  struggled 
far.— p.  176. 


LECTURE  V. 

THE  HERO  AN   MAN  OF  LETTERS — JOHNSON,    ROUSSEAU,    BURNS. 

THE  HERO  as  Man  of  Letters  altogether  a  product  of  these  new 
ages:  A  Heroic  Soul  in  very  strange  guise.  Literary  men;  genuine 
and  spurious.  Fichte's  "Divine  Idea  of  the  World  :"  His  notion 
of  the  True  Man  of  Letters.  Goethe,  the  Pattern  Literary 
Hero.— p.  182. 

The  disorganized  condition  of  Literature,  the  summary  of  all  other 
modern  disorganizations.  The  Writer  of  a  true  Book  our  true  mod- 


SUMMARY.  295 

ern  Preacher.  Miraculous  influence  of  Books:  The  Hebrew  Bible. 
Books  are  now  our  actual  University,  our  Church,  our  Parliament. 
With  Books,  Democracy  is  inevitable.  Thought  the  true  thaumatur- 
gic  influences,  by  which  man  works  all  things  whatsoever. — p.  187. 

Organization  of  the  "Literary  Guild:"  Needful  discipline;  "price- 
less lessons "  of  Poverty.  The  Literary  Priesthood,  and  its  impor- 
tance to  society.  Chinese  Literary  Governors.  Fallen  into  strange 
times;  and  strange  things  need  to  be  speculated  upon. — p.  195. 

An  age  of  Skepticism:  The  very  possibility  of  Heroism  formally 
abnegated.  Benthamism  an  eyeless  Heroism.  Skepticism,  Spiritual 
Paralysis,  Insincerity:  Heroes  gone  out;  Quacks  come  in .  Our  brave 
Chatham  himself  lived  the  strangest  mimetic  life  all  along.  Violent 
remedial  revulsions :  Chartisms,  French  Revolutions:  The  Age  of 
Skepticism  passing  away.  Let  each  Man  look  to  the  mending  of  his 
own  Life. — p.  201. 

Johnson  one  of  our  Great  English  Souls.  His  miserable  Youth 
and  Hypochondria:  Stubborn  Self-help.  His  royal  submission  to 
what  is  really  higher  than  himself.  How"lie  stood  by  the  old  For- 
mulas: Not  less  original  for  that.  Formulas:  their  Use  and  Abuse. 
Johnson's  unconscious  sincerity.  His  twofold  Gospel,  a  kind  of 
Moral  Prudence  and  clear  Hatred  of  Cant.  His  writings  sincere  and 
full  of  substance.  Architectural  nobleness  of  his  "Dictionary." 
Boswell,  with  all  his  faults,  a  true  hero  -  worshiper  of  a  true 
Hero.— p.  210. 

Rousseau  a  morbid,  excitable,  spasmodic  man;  intense  rather  than 
strong.  Had  not  the  invaluable  "  talent  of  Silence."  His  face,  ex- 
pressive of  his  character.  His  Egoism:  Hungry  for  the  praises  of 
men.  His  books:  Passionate  appeals,  which  did  once  more  struggle 
toward  Reality:  A  Prophet  to  his  Time;  as  he  could,  and  as  the  Time 
could.  Rosepink,  and  artificial  bedizenment.  Fretted,  exasperated, 
till  the  heart  of  him  went  mad:  He  could  be  cooped,  starving,  into 
garrets;  laughed  at  as  a  maniac;  but  he  could  not  be  hindered  from 
setting  the  world  on  fire. — p.  218. 

Burns  a  genuine  Hero,  in  a  withered,  unbelieving,  second-hand 
Century.  The  largest  soul  of  all  the  British  lands,  came  among  us  in 
the  shape  of  a  hard-handed  Scottish  Peasant.  His  heroic  Father  and 
Mother,  and  their  sore  struggle  through  life.  His  rough  untutored 
dialect:  Affecionate  joyousness.  His  writings  a  poor  fragment  of  him. 
His  conversational  gifts:  High  dutchesses  and  low  ostlers  alike  fas- 
cinated by  him. — p.  222. 

Resemblance  between  Burns  and  Mirabeau.  Official  Superiors  : 
The  greatest  "  thinking- faculty  "  in  this  land  superciliously  dispensed 


296  LECTURES  ON  HEROES. 

with.  Hero-worship  under  strange  conditions.  The  notablest  phasis 
of  Burns'  history  his  visit  to  Edinburgh.  Foi*  one  man  who  can 
stand  prosperity,  there  are  a  hundred  that  will  stand  adversity.  Lit- 
erary Lionisin. — p.  225. 


LECTURE  VI. 

THE  HERO  AS  KING.        CROMWELL,    NAPOLEON — MODERN 
REVOLUTIONISM. 

THE  KING  the  most  important  of  Great  Men  ;  the  summary  of  all 
the  various  figures  of  Heroism.  To  enthrone  the  Ablest  Man,  the 
true  business  of  all  Social  procedure  :  The  Ideal  of  Constitutions. 
Tolerable  and  intolerable  approximations.  Divine  Rights  and  Diabol- 
ic Wrongs.— p.  231. 

The  world's  sad  predicament ;  that  of  having  its  Able-Man  to  seek 
and  not  knowing  in  what  manner  to  proceed  about  it.  The  era  of 
Modern  Revolutionism  dates  from  Luther.  The  French  Revolution 
no  mere  act  of  General  Insanity  :  Truth  clad  in  hell-fire  ;  the  Trump 
of  Doom  to  Plausibilities  and  empty  Routine.  The  cry  of  "  Liberty 
and  Equality  "at  bottom  the  repudiation  of  sham  Heroes.  Hero 
worship  exists  forever  and  everywhere  ;  from  divine  adoration  down 
to  the  common  courtesies  of  man  and  man  :  The  soul  of  Order,  to 
which  all  things,  Revolutions  included,  work.  Some  Cromwell 
or  Napoleon  the  necessary  finish  of  a  Sansculottism.  The  man- 
ner in  which  Kings  were  made  and  Kingship  itself  first  took 
rise.— p.  235. 

Puritanism  a  section  of  the  universal  law  of  Belief  against  Make- 
believe.  Laud  a  weak  ill-starred  Pedant :  in  his  spasmodic  vehem- 
ence heeding  no  voice  of  prudence,  no  cry  of  pity.  Universal  neces- 
sity for  true  Forms :  How  to  distinguish  between  True  and  False. 
The  nakedest  Reality  preferable  to  any  empty  Semblance,  however 
dignified.— p.  241. 

The  work  of  the  Puritans.  The  Skeptical  Eighteeth  century,  and 
its  constitutional  estimate  of  Cromwell  and  his  associates.  No  wish 
to  disparage  such  characters  as  Hampden,  Eliot,  Pym  ;  a  most  con- 
stitutional, unblamable,  dignified  set  of  men.  The  rugged  outcast 
Cromwell,  the  man  of  them  all  in  whom  one  still  finds  human  stuff, 
The  One  thing  worth  revolting  for. — p.  244. 

Cromwell's  "  hypocrisy,"  an  impossible  theory.  His  pious  Life  as  a 
Farmer  until  fortv  years  of  age,  His  public  successes  honest  sue- 


SUMMARY.  2S? 

cesses  of  a  brave  man.  His  participation  in  the  King's  death  no 
ground  of  condemnation.  His  eye  for  facts  no  hypocrite's  gift.  His 
Ironsides  the  embodiment  of  this  insight  of  his. — p.  249. 

Know  the  men  that  may  be  trusted  :  alas,  this  is  yet,  in  these  days, 
very  far  from  us.  Cromwell's  hypochondria :  His  reputed  confusion 
of  speech  :  His  habit  of  prayer.  His  speeches  unpremeditated  and 
full  of  meaning.  His  reticences ;  called  "  lying"  and  "  dissimula- 
tion :  "  Not  one  falsehood  proved  against  him. — p.  254. 

Foolish  charge  of  "  ambition."  The  great  Empire  of  Silence: 
Noble  silent  men,  scattered  here  and  there,  each  in  his  department ; 
silently  thinking,  silently  hoping,  silently  working.  Two  kinds  of 
ambition  ;  one  wholly  blamable,  the  other  laudable,  inevitable  :  How 
it  actually  was  with  Cromwell. — p.  261. 

Hume's  Fanatic-Hypocrite  theory.  How  indispensable  everywhere 
a  King  is,  in  all  movements  of  men.  Cromwell,  as  King  of  Puritan- 
ism, of  England.  Constitutional  palaver  :  Dismissal  of  the  Rump 
Parliament.  Cromwell's  Parliaments  and  Protectorship  :  Parliaments 
having  failed,  there  remained  nothing  for  him  but  the  way  of  Des- 
potism. His  closing  days  :  His  poor  old  Mother.  It  was  not  to  men's 
judgments  that  he  appealed;  nor  have  men  judged  him  very 
well.— p.  269. 

The  French  Revolution,  the  "  third  act "  of  Protestantism.  Napo- 
leon, infected  with  the  quackeries  of  his  age  :  had  a  kind  of  sincerity 
—an  instinct  toward  the  practical.  His  faith—  "the  Tools  to  him 
that  can  handle  them,"  the  whole  truth  of  Democracy.  His  heart- 
hatred  of  Anarchy.  Finally,  his  quackeries  got  the  upper  hand  : 
He  would  found  a  "  Dynasty  :  "  Believed  wholly  in  the  dupeability 
of  Men.  This  Napoleonism  was  unjust,  a  falshood  and  could  not 
last.— p.  280. 


INDEX. 


AGINCOURT,  Shakespeare's  battle 

of,  129. 
Ali,  young,    Mahomet's  kinsman 

and  convert,  69. 
Allegory,  the  sportful  shadow  of 

earnest  Faith,  6,  36. 
Ambition,  foolish  charge  of,  262, 

laudable  ambition,  265. 
Arabia  and  the  Arabs,  55. 

Balder,  the  white  Sungod,  21,  41. 

Belief,  the  true  god-announcing 
miracle,  67,  90,  171,  205  ;  war 
of,  241.  .See  religion,  Skepti- 
cism. 

Benthamism,  89,  203. 

Books,  miraculous  influence  of, 
189,  193 ;  our  modern  Univer- 
sity, Church  and  Parliament, 
192. 

Boswell,  216. 

Bunyan's  Pilgrim  Progress,  7. 

Burns,  222 ;  his  birth,  and 
humble  heroic  parents,  223 ; 
rustic  dialect,  224 ;  the  most 
gifted  British  soul  of  his  cen- 
tury, 225 ;  resemblance  to 
Mirabeau,  225 ;  his  sincerity, 
228  ;  his  visit  to  Edinburgh, 
Lion-hunted  to  death,  229. 

Caabah,  the,  with  its  Black  Stone 
and  sacred  Well,  58. 

Canopus,  worship  of,  11. 

Charles  I  fatally  incapable  of  be- 
ing dealt  with,  263. 

China,  literary  governors  of,  199. 

Church.     See  Books. 

Cromwell,  245 ;  his  hypochon- 
dria, 250,  256  ;  early  marriage 
and  conversion;  a  quiet  farmer, 


251  ;  his  Ironsides,  253 ;  his 
Speeches,  259,  276  ;  his  "  ambi- 
tion," and  the  like,  261 ;  dis- 
misses the  Rump  Parliament, 
271  ;  Protectorship  and  Par- 
liamentary Futilities,  275  ;  his 
last  days,  and  closing  sorrows, 
278. 

Dante,  101  ;  biography  in  his 
Book  and  Portrait,  101  ;  his 
birth,  education  and  early 
career,  103 ;  love  for  Beatrice, 
unhappy  marriage,  banishment, 
104  ;  uncourtier-like  ways,  104; 
death,  106 ;  his  Divina  Corn- 
uiedia  genuinely  a  song,  107 ; 
the  Unseen  \Vr  rid,  as  figured 
in  the  Christianity  of  the  Mid- 
dle Age,  114  ;  "  uses  "  of  Dante, 
117. 

David,  the  Hebrew  King,  54. 

Divine  Right  of  Kings,  233. 

Duty,  36,  74;  infinite  nature  of, 
88;  skeptical  spiritual  paralysis, 
202. 

Edda,  the  Scandinavian,  19. 
Eighteenth  Century, the  skeptical, 

201,  210,  245. 
Elizabethan  Era,  120. 

Faults,  his,  not  the  criterion  of 

any  man,  54. 
Fichte's  theory  of  literary  men, 

Fire,  miraculous  nature  of,  20. 
Forms,  necessity  for,  242. 
Frost.     See  Fire. 
(Joethe's  "  characters,"  124;   not- 
ablest  of  literary  men,  186. 


300 


INDEX. 


Graphic,  secret  of  being,  109. 
Gray's    misconception    of    Norse 
lore,  40. 

Hampden,  245. 

Heroes,  Universal  History  the 
united  biographies  of,  1,  34; 
how  "  little  critics"  account  for 
great  men,  15,  all  Heroes  fun- 
damentally of  the  same  stuff, 
33,  50,  94,  136,  182,  225,  Hero- 
ism possible  to  all,  150,  171  ; 
Intellect  the  primary  outfit, 
125;  no  man  a  hero  to  a  valet- 
sou},  217,  245,  255. 

Hero-worship  the  tap-root  of  all 
Religion,  13,  17,  49,  perennial 
in  man,  16,  99,  149,  238. 

Hutchinson  and  Cromwell,  245, 
279. 

Iceland,  the  home  of  Norse  Poets, 

19. 
Idolatry,  142;  criminal  only  when 

insincere,  143. 

Igdrasil,  the  Life-Tree,  24,  120. 
Intellect,  the  summary  of  man's 

gifts,  125,  201. 
Islam,  66. 

Job,  the  Book  of,  57. 

Johnson's  difficulties,  poverty, 
hypochondria,  210;  rude  self- 
help;  stands  genuinely  by  the 
old  formulas,  210;  his  noble 
unconscious  sincerity,  214;  two- 
fold Gospel,  of  Prudence  and 
hatred  of  Cant,  215;  his  Dic- 
tionary, 216;  the  brave  old 
Samuel,  218,  265. 

JOtuns,  20,  42, 

Kadijah,  the  good,  Mahomet's 
first  Wife,  62,  68. 

King,  the,  a  summary  of  all  the 
various  figures  of  Heroism,  231; 
indispensable  in  all  the  move- 
ments of  men,  270. 

Knox's  influence  on  Scotland,  169; 
the  bravest  of  Scotchmen,  173; 
his  unassuming  career;  is  sent 
to  the  French  Galleys,  173;  his 


colloquies  with  Queen    Mary, 
176;  vein  of  drollery;  a  brother 
to  high  and  to  low;  his  death, 
178. 
Koran,  the,  75. 

Lamaism,  Grand,  5. 

Leo  X,  the  elegant  Pagan  Pope, 
156. 

Liberty  and  Equality,  150,  239. 

Literary  men,  182;  in  China,  199. 

Literature,  chaotic  condition  of, 
187;  not  our  heaviest  evil,  201. 

Luther's  birth  and  parentage,  151 ; 
hardship  and  rigorous  neces- 
sity; death  of  Alexis;  becomes 
monk,  152;  his  religious  des- 
pair; finds  a  Bible;  deliverance 
from  darkness,  153;  Rome; 
Tetzel,  156;  burns  the  Pope's 
Bull,  157;  at  the  Diet  of  Worms, 
158;  King  of  the  Reformation, 
163;  "  Duke  George's  nine  days 
running,"  165;  his  little  daugh- 
ter's deathbed;  his  solitary 
Patmos,  166;  his  Portrait,  168. 

Mahomet's  birth,  boyhood,  and 
youth,  60;  marries  Kadijah,  62; 
quiet;  unambitious  life,  63; 
divine  commission,  65;  the 
good  Kadijah  believes  him; 
Seid;  young  Ali,  68;  offenses, 
and  sore  struggles,  69;  flight 
from  Mecca;  being  driven  to 
take  the  sword,  he  uses  it,  70; 
the  Koran,  75;  a  veritable 
Hero,  83;  Seid's  death,  84;  free- 
dom from  Cant,  84;  the  infinite 
nature  of  Duty,  88. 

Mary,  Queen,  and  Knox,  176. 

Mayflower,  sailing  of  the,  169. 

Mecca,  58. 

Middle  Ages,  represented  by 
Dante  and  Shakespeare,  114, 119. 

Montrose,  the  Hero-Cavalier,  270. 

Musical,  all  deep  things,  98. 

Napoleon,  a  portentous  mixture 
of  Quack  and  Hero,  280;  bis 
instinct  for  the  practical,  282; 
his  democratic  faith,  and  heart- 


hatred  for  anarchy,  283;  aposta- 
tised from  his  old  faith  in  Facts, 
and  took  to  believing  in  Sem- 
blances, 284;  this  Napoleonism, 
was  unjust,  and  could  not  last, 
286. 

Nature,  all  one  great  Miracle,  8, 
80,  167 ;  a  righteous  umpire, 
72. 

Novalis,  on  Man,  12  ;  Belief,  67  ; 
Shakespeare,  127. 

Odia,  the  first  Norse  "man  of 
genius,"  25 ;  historic  rumors 
and  guesses,  26  ;  how  he  came 
to  be  deified,  29 ;  invented 
"runes,"  32;  Hero,  Prophet, 
God,  32. 

Olaf ,  King,  and  Thor,  46. 

Original  man  the  ttincere  man,  53, 
149. 

Paganism,  Scandinavian,  4  ;  not 
mere  Allegory,  6 ;  Nature- 
worship,  8,  35  ;  Hero-worship, 
12  ;  creed  of  our  fathers,  18,  42, 
45  ;  Impersonation  of  the  visi- 
ble workings  of  Nature,  20 ; 
contrasted  with  Greek  Pagan- 
ism, 23;  the  first  Norse  Thinker, 
25  ;  main  practical  Belief  ;  in- 
dispensable to  be  brave,  36 ; 
hearty,  homely,  rugged  My- 
thology; Balder,  Thor,  40;  Con- 
secration of  Valor,  48. 

Parliaments  superseded  by  Books, 
194  ;  Cromwell's  Parliaments, 
271. 

Past,  the  whole,  the  possession  of 
the  Present,  48. 

Poet,  the,  and  Prophet,  94,  118, 
130. 

Poetry  and  Prose,  distinction  of, 
97,  107. 

Popery,  161. 

Poverty,  advantages  of,  120. 

Priest,  the  true,  a  kind  of  Pro- 
phet, 136. 

Printing,  consequence  of,  194. 

Private  judgment,  147. 

Progress  of  the  Species,  139. 

Prose.     See  Poetry. 


301 


Protestantism,  the  root  of  Modern 
European  History,  146  ;  not 
dead  yet,  161  ;  its  living  fruit, 
169,  235. 

Purgatory,  noble  Catholic  concep- 
tion of,  113. 

Puritanism,  founded  by  Knox, 
169,  true  beginning  of  America, 
169  ;  the  one  epoch  of  Scotland, 
170;  Theocracy,  179;  Puri- 
tanism in  England,  241,  243, 
267. 

Quackery  originates  nothing,  5, 
51  ;  age  of,  207  ;  Quacks  and 
Dupes,  255. 

Ragnarok,  46. 

Reformer,  the  true,  136. 

Religion,  a  man's,  the  chief  fact 
with  regard  to  him,  2  ;  based 
on  Hero-worship,  12  ;  propagat- 
ing by  the  sword,  71 ;  cannot 
succeed  by  being  "easy,"  82. 

Revolution,  233;  the  French, 
235,  280. 

Richter,  11. 

Right  and  Wrong,  89,  115. 

Rousseau,  not  a  strong  man  ;  his 
Portrait ;  egoism,  218  ;  his  pas- 
sionate appeals,  220;  his  Books, 
like  himself,  unhealthy ;  the 
Evangelist  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution, 221. 

Skepticism,  a  spiritual  paralysis 
200,  210,  245. 

Scotland  awakened  into  life  by 
Knox,  171. 

Secret,  the  open,  94. 

Seid,  Mahomet's  slave  and  friend, 
67,84. 

Shakespeare  and  the  Elizabethan 
Era,  120;  his  all-sufficing  intel- 
lect, 121,  125  ;  his  Characters, 
123;  his  Dramas,  a  part  of  Nat- 
ure herself,  127;  his  joyful 
tranquillity,  and  overflowing 
love  of  laughter,  127;  his  hearty 
Patriotism,  130 ;  glimpses  of 
the  world  that  was  in  him,  130; 
a  heaven -sen*  Light-Bringer, 
132;  a  King  of  Saxondoin,  134. 


302 


INDEX. 


Shekinah,  Man  tlie  true,  12. 

Silence,  the  great  empire  of,  119, 
264. 

Sincerity,  better  than  graceful- 
ness, 36;  the  first  characteristic 
of  heroism  and  originality,  52, 
63,  148,  150,  184. 

Theocracy,  a,  striven  for  by  all 

true  Reformers,  180,  267. 
Thor,  and  his  adventures,  21,  40- 

45;  his  last  appearance,  46. 
Thought,  miraculous  influence  of, 

25,  34,  195 ;  musical  Thought, 

98. 

Thunder.     See  Thor. 
Time,  the  great  mystery  of,  10. 


Tolerance,   true    and  false,   168, 

177. 
Turenne,  93. 

Universities,  190. 

Valor,  the  basis  of  all  virtue, 
38,  41 ;  Norse  consecration  of, 
48;  Christian  Valor,  141. 

Voltaire-worship,  17. 

Wish,  the  Norse  god,  22;  enlarged 
into  a  heaven  by  Mahomet,  90. 

Worms,  Luther  at,  158. 

Worship,  transcendent  wonde^ 
10.  See  Hero-worship. 

Zemz.em,  the  sacred  Well,  58. 


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TOM,  THE  READY  ;  or,  Up  from  the  Lowest.  By  RANDOLPH  HILL. 
THE  CASTAWAYS ;  or,  On  the  Florida  Reefs.    By  JAMES  OTIS. 

CAPTAIN  KIDD'S  GOLD.    The  True  Story  of  an  Adventurous 

Sailor  Boy.    By  JAMES  FRANKLIN  FITTS. 
TOM  THATCHER'S  FORTUNE.    By  HORATIO  ALGER,  JR. 

LOST  IN  THE  CANON.  The  Story  of  Sam  Willett's  Adventures, 

on  the  Great  Colorado  of  the  West.    By  ALFRED  R.  CALHOUN. 
A  YOUNG  HERO  ;  or,  Fighting  to  Win.    By  EDWARD  S.  ELLIS. 

THE  ERRAND  BOY ;  or,  How  Phil  Brent  Won  Success.     By 

HORATIO  ALGER,  JR. 
THE  ISLAND  TREASURE  ;  or,  Harry  Darrel's  Fortune.  By 

FRANK  H.  CONVERSE. 
A  RUNAWAY  BRIG ;  or,  An  Accidental  Cruise.  By  JAMES  OTIS. 

A  JAUNT  THROUGH  JAVA.    The  Story  of  a  Journey  to  the 

Sacred  Mountain  by  Two  American  Boys.    By  E.  S.  ELLIS. 
CAPTURED  BY  APES  ;  or.  How  Philip  Garland  Became  King 

of  Apeland.    By  HARRY  PRENTICE. 
TOM  THE  BOOT-BLACK ;  or,  The  Road  to  Success,    By  HORATIO 

ALGER.  JR. 
ROY  GILBERT'S  SEARCH.    A  Tale  of  the  Great  Lakes.    By 

WILLIAM  P.  CHIPMAN. 
THE  TREASURE-FINDERS.  A  Boy's  Adventures  in  Nicara- 

uga.    By  JAMKS  OTIS. 
BUDD  BOYD'S  TRIUMPH;  or,  The  Boy  Firm  of  Fox  Island. 

By  WILLIAM  P.  CHIPMAN. 
TONY,  THE  HERO ;   or,  A  Brave  Boy's  Adventures  with  a 

Tramp.    By  HORATIO  ALQER,  JR. 
CAPTURED  BY  ZULUS.    A  Story  of  Trapping  in  Africa.    By 

HARRY  PHENTH^K. 

THE  TRAIN  BOY.     By  HORATIO  ALGER,  JR. 
DAN  THE  NEWSBOY.     By  HORATIO  ALGER,  JR. 
SEARCH  FOR  THE  SILVER  CITY.    A  Story  of  Adventure 

in  Yucatan.    By  JAMES  OTIS. 
THE  BOY  CRUISERS ;  or,  Paddling  in  Florida.    By  ST.  GEORGE 

RATH  BORNE. 

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\  The  National  Standard  Dictionary.  A  pronouncing  lexicon  ol 
the  English  Language,  containing  40,000  words,  and  illustrated  with 
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Courier-Journal,  Louiswlle. 

The  Usages  of  the  Best  Society.  A  manual  of  social  etiquette, 
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A  Handy  Dictionary  of  Synonyms,  with  which  are  combined 
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speak  or  write  the  English  language  fluently  and  correctly.  By  H. 
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44  Will  be  found  of  great  value  to  those  who  are  not  experienced  in  speech  01 
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A  Handy  Classical  and  Mythological  Dictionary.  For  popn 
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fcehavior  and  social  customs.  Containing  sensible  advice  and  counsel 
on  a  great  variety  of  important  matters  which  girls  should  know. 
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—Boston  Beacon. 

The  Art  «f  Letter  Writing.  A  manual  of  polite  correspond 
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Ladies'  Fancy  Work.  New  Revised  Edition,  giving  designs  and 
plain  directions  for  all  kinds  of  Fancy  Needle- Work.  Edited  by 
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Knitting  ana  Crochet.  A  guide  to  the  use  of  the  Needle  and  the 
Hook.  Edited  by  JENNY  JUNE.  200  illustrations.  Paper  cover, 
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Needle-Work.  A  manual  of  stitches  and  studies  in  embroidery 
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44 1  do  not  hesitate  to  pronounce  Mrs.  Croly's  works  on  Needle- Work  and 
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Wiey  are  charming  reading,  us  well  as  useful  guides  to  housewife  and  needle 
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>  Letters  and  Monograms.  For  marking  on  Silk,  Linen  and  othei 
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Embroidery,  however,  is  a  real  enjoyment  to  me,  and  I  am  glad  to  aid  all 
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A  Dictionary  of  American  Politics.  Comprising  accounts  of 
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with  Political  Phrases,  Familiar  Names  of  Persons  and  Places,  Note- 
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565  pages.  Cloth,  12mo,  price  $1.00.  Ptper,  50  cents. 

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Boys'  Useful  Pastimes.  Pleasant  and  profitable  amusement  for 
spare  hours  in  the  use  of  tools.  By  PROF.  ROBERT  GRIFFITH,  A.  M. 
800  illustrations.  Cloth,  12mo,  price  $1.00. 

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"  A  mass  of  information  in  a  handy  form,  easy  of  access  whenever  occasion 
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which  are  combined  the  words  apposite  in  meaning.  Prepared  to 
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